Joe McShea and Edgar Mosa’s Flags

The duo bring their glorious art to the shoreline of Fire Island.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOMAS McCARTY

TEXT BY STEPHEN TRUAX

On an evening like this, we would probably all be sitting together anyway. It is dusk, and against the sky’s gradient the white taffeta ribbons whipping in the wind are alight with the sunset. We watch them in silence, a group of ten gay men standing together alongside the artists Joe McShea and Edgar Mosa on an empty stretch of the beach on Fire Island between the Pines and Cherry Grove, in front of an undeveloped area of protected dunes and scrub forest known as the Meat Rack. They are nothing more than long strips of fabric sewn together at one end, and tied carefully to dried bamboo rods.