Early gay photography
Years of Photographs of Gay Men in Love
Hundreds of photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries offer a glimpse at the life of gay men during a time when their adoration was illegal almost everywhere.
A beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (–) is part of a new guide that offers a visual glimpse of what life may have been enjoy for those men, who went against the law to find love in one another’s arms. In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Affection s–s, hundreds of images tell the story of love and affection between men, with some clearly in love and others hinting at more than just friendship. The collection belongs to Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, a married couple who has accumulated over 2, photographs of “men in love” during the course of two decades. While the majority of the images hail from the United States and are of predominantly white men, there are images from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, and the United Kingdom among the cache.
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Newly Published Portraits Document a Century of Gay Men in Love
&#;Loving&#; features around photos that offer an intimate look at men&#;s love between the s and s
When Texas couple Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell stumbled onto a s-era photograph in a Dallas antiques shop some 20 years ago, they were startled to notice a relationship that looked much like theirs: two men, embracing and clearly in love.
As Dee Swann writes for the Washington Post, the image spoke to the couple about the history of affection between men.
“The open expression of the love that they shared also revealed a moment of determination,” Nini and Treadwell reveal the Post. “Taking such a photo, during a time when they would have been less understood than they would be today, was not without risk. We were intrigued that a photo love this could have survived into the [21st] century. Who were they?”
In the decades that followed this initial discovery, the pair came across more than 2, photos of men in love—at first accidentally and later on purpose. The result of their trips to flea markets, shops, estate sales a
In the s and '70s, amid a climate of political upheaval and civil rights activism, LGBT communities across the US were uniting for visibility and change. Events like the Stonewall riots, which saw LGBT activists rise up against discrimination in Modern York City, helped to galvanize this movement by bringing together a generation of queer young people under a banner of pride. And the perform of photojournalists such as Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies brought this movement to the masses through their groundbreaking photography.
A new exhibition at the New York Public Library titled Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 brings together the work of these two influential photographers, as well as periodicals, flyers, and first-person narratives from this pivotal moment in LGBT history.
The show is curated by Jason Baumann, the NYPL's assistant director of collection development. BuzzFeed News spoke with Baumann, who coordinates the library's LGBT initiatives, about how photography helped to shape the modern LGBT movement as well as the lasting legacy of Stonewall, 50 years after the ri
In Love and Invisible: Vintage Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Couples from the Late 19th and Adv 20th Centuries
A photographic portrait of a couple serves as a public affirmation of their love and partnership. It conveys a clear message to the world: &#;We love each other. We care deeply for one another. We take pride in who we are together.&#;
In the late 19th and in advance 20th centuries, a hour often associated with repression, many gay and lesbian couples boldly celebrated their love through studio portraits.
Despite the prevailing notion that same-sex relationships were shrouded in secrecy, as famously described by Oscar Wilde in his poem &#;Two Loves&#; as &#;the like that dare not pronounce its name,&#; gay and lesbian couples often chose to express their affection openly.
In fact, numerous same-sex couples lived together openly throughout their lives. This was notably more feasible for women, as societal norms permitted women to live together if they were not married, often referred to euphemistically as &#;female companions.&#;
For men, opportunities for meeting like-minded