Bill Costa (1944-1995) was just beginning to enjoy a level of success as a photographer when he succumbed to a heart attack on August 23, 1995 at the age of 51 in his summer cottage at Oxford, New York, not long after his first collection of photographs was published. Costa briefly published his own line of greeting cards (which he called Bill Costa Select), and the attention generated by his first modest exhibitions and the publication of his photos in Vice brought his work to the attention of St. Martin's Press, which was launching a line of small photographic gift books for the gay market under editor Michael Denneny’s Stonewall Inn imprint. Costa was the first in the series, published in 1995, shortly before the photographer's death. Posthumously, his work was published as a portfolio in Provocateur, and an exhibition of his estate prints was mounted in New York City at Wessel+O'Connor Gallery for a month in the Fall of 1997. Subsequently, several Costa calendars were released and the book Bill Costa Icons was published in 1997 by Bruno Gmunder Verlag.
