For over three decades photographer Tom Bianchi has been capturing the gay male experience in America. Best known for his book Fire Island Pines: Polaroids 1975-1983, a series documenting the gay community that took sanctuary in the New York enclave—and the hedonistic activities that made it famous—Bianchi’s work abounds with images of tanned and toned nude male forms.

But the California-based photographer's life hasn’t always been a year-round holiday. Growing up in Middle America, he and his peers took to Fire Island as a safe haven from a disapproving world. At the age of thirty four, having spent ten years practising law, the documentarian tore up his degree and, with a Polaroid camera in hand, embarked on his new life as an artist.

Following the the Aids epidemic in the 1980s, which saw Bianchi lose his partner and many friends, he became active in the fight against the disease, co-founding a biotechnology company and working on the development of Aids medication.

Here, director Barbara Anastacio takes us into the photographer’s modernist home in Palm Springs, California, where he gives some valuable lessons on life, love and being naked.