Vintage gay pic
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The collection belongs to Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, a married couple who has accumulated over 2,800 photographs of “men in love” during the course of two decades. It's easy for us as a newer generation to think they must have just been living in hell — but to look back at these photos, the people in them are happy. They are joyous.
Let’s be honest, we are looking at predominantly white men, because that's the unfortunate truth of the world, that white men get everything first.
The men likely just “wanted to have something to remember themselves by,” as Treadwell tells Reuters’ Denis Balibouse and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber.
Now, for the first time, the book and exhibition mean that “these couples get to speak for themselves,” as Nini told CNN’s Oscar Holland in 2020. Nini and Treadwell saw themselves in the photograph and decided to bring it home.
They thought that first photograph was just a one-off, and they didn’t expect to find others like it.
In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, 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. With time, however, they found plenty—far more than they needed to fill a book.
Following the photography book’s publication in 2020, the images resonated with readers all over the world.
Taken in 1927, the snapshot showed two men embracing. Loving is available in five languages: French, English, Italian, German and Spanish.
Nini and Treadwell hope that the new exhibition—and shows like it in the future—will continue to spread the message that “love is love,” as Treadwell tells the Art Newspaper’s Karen Chernick.
“Love has been around forever,” he adds.
“Loving” is on view at the Musée Rath in Geneva, Switzerland, through September 24.
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100 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 love was illegal almost everywhere.
A beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a new book that offers a visual glimpse of what life may have been like for those men, who went against the law to find love in one another’s arms.
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.
What do images of men in love during a time when it was illegal tell us? The show, titled “Loving,” is based on the 2020 photography book Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love by Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell.
What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together?
They may not have been highly affluent, but they had enough income to rent these basic little cabins out on Cherry Grove. In the 1950s, it was dangerous for queer people to document themselves. Simply having photos developed that reflected homosexuality could get you arrested. Seeing ourselves in the past is as much about being certain of our present and, dare I say, our future.
This is the time of the McCarthy era and the Lavender Scare, when men couldn't dance with men, women can't dance with women. Soon these “theater people” would start to formulate a strong community where people were able to be openly gay; they could cross-dress and play with gender norms.
What makes these photos so wonderful is that they are very rare.
When we see them as connected, we feel more whole, and that’s what love is about for many of us anyway.
The book, Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s (5 Continents Editions), is available online.
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While some of the images were taken in photo booths, many others were likely taken by a third party.As a trans woman, I definitely felt like I was not present in Cherry Grove at that time, but gay men and women were there, carving out space that I get to inhabit today.