We Were There

THE EXHILARATION of visiting Queer Lens: A History of Photography at Los Angeles’ Getty Center begins at the museum’s front steps, which have been painted in rainbow stripes with the words “Celebrate Love” sweeping across them. Opening at a time when LGBT rights are increasingly under attack, Queer Lens is described as the first major exhibition in the U.S. to explore the full sweep of photographic history through a distinctly LGBT perspective. The show’s curator, Paul Martineau, is aware of its importance when he declares: “This show tells a powerful story of queer resilience and power.”

            After its introduction nearly 200 years ago, the immediacy and accessibility of photography soon made it a vital tool for marginalized people, fostering the emergence of homosocial, homoerotic, and openly homosexual imagery long before mainstream culture dared to acknowledge it. Queer Lens features more than 270 works by 157 photographers, spanning from the mid-19th century to the present and tracing the ways in which photography has documented, shaped, and amplified the complex narratives of gender, sexuality, and self-expression. These are some highlights of the exhibition, which extends across nine chronological sections.

            The earliest portion, “Homosocial Culture and Romantic Relationships, 1810–1868,” explores the social acceptability of intimacy between people of the same gender in the early 19th century, when “Boston Marriage” was an accepted term to describe two unmarried women who lived together. In this section, an 1810s cut-paper silhouette depicts two women surrounded by intertwined strands of their hair. Nearby, a portrait of Frances Clayton depicts one of the hundreds of women who dressed as men to fight during the Civil War. A highlight is the outrageous 1870 portrait of Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, gay men who performed on stage together as Fanny and Stella.

            The next section, “Language and Identity, 1869–1919,” covers the period after Karl Maria Kertbeny introduced the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” marking the beginning of a division between straight and gay identities. In this era, protected by the cover of a scientific photograph, Eadweard Muybridge discreetly tucked an 1887 sequence of two women kissing into his landmark series studying movement. In a transgressive 1891 image by Alice Austen, the artist shows herself and two female friends dressed like men. The woman in the middle flaunts a phallic racket handle near her crotch.

            Next the exhibit explores the Prohibition-era “Pansy Craze, 1920–1934,” which helped make female impersonators famous. A rare 1927 image by Black photographer James Van Der Zee shows Black men wearing feminine attire. Here we also see celebrated photographers Cecil Beaton’s and Man Ray’s portrait of Marcel Duchamp dressed as his female alter ego Rrose Sélavy. Duchamp, a heterosexual artist, was flaunting how cool it was to be “in the know” about modern trends.

            “Hiding in Plain Sight, 1935–1949” includes Weegee’s The Gay Deceiver (1939), a striking image of a young man in drag being arrested. He smiles, unafraid, and lifts his skirt gleefully, a profound assertion of queer resilience at a time of cruel criminalization. The 1930s and ’40s introduced photo booths and the Polaroid Land Camera, which provided LGBT people with privacy to capture moments of intimacy. This section includes a glorious photo-booth picture of two men kissing as a beautiful, yet fragile, reminder of a measure of social progress.

            “Rise of the Gay Liberation Movement, 1950–1980” opens in the period when the notion that gay people might have infiltrated the U.S. State Department led to the firings of some 5,000 people. Around the same time, the first homophile groups were founded to advocate for gay rights, while also creating a sense of community through events and publications. Fred W. McDarrah’s stirring 1966 photo Mattachine Society “Sip-In” Julius’ Bar, New York, NY captures a moment when, following the law, a bartender refused service to a group of gay men. Diana Davis’ dazzling portrayal of the Gay Liberation Front’s 1969 march on Times Square and Arthur Tress’ joyful depiction of activists at the first gay Pride parade capture the revolution that ensued after the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

             “The AIDS Crisis, 1981–1996” includes Therese Frare’s David Kirby on his deathbed, Ohio, 1990, which shocked the world when Life magazine published it in 1990. Martineau chose this photo as the only image in the exhibition of a patient dying from AIDS-related illness. It stands at the center of a gallery as an altar, unavoidable to all visitors. David Wojnarowicz’ Untitled (Buffalo) (1988–1989) depicts bison tumbling head-first off a cliff. The photo gives the viewer goosebumps when they find the photographer’s face reflected in this image, integrating himself into his iconic visual metaphor of a generation of gay men lost to AIDS.

             The gallery “Friends of Dorothy” refers to the coded expression that enabled gay men to safely identify themselves in public and features more than 100 portraits of queer luminaries. The section becomes a deeply moving cathedral for LGBT visitors, who are made aware that they come from a powerful lineage of trailblazers.

            The final two sections, “Things Are Queer (1996–2014)” and “The Future Is Queer,” span from the 1990s, when the activist group Queer Nation led the effort to reclaim the word “queer” from its use as a slur to a term of empowerment, to our present time. Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait/Cutting (1993) shows a childlike vision of stick-figure lesbian domestic bliss carved into the artist’s back, externalizing her pain at a time when LGBT people were not thought capable of lasting relationships or raising children. Opie’s 2004 image of herself nursing her baby is a reminder of the resilience and evolution of our community.

            One of the last images is Matias Sauter’s exquisite Cristian en el “Amor de Calle,” showing a young man on the brink of adulthood. The only A.I.-generated image in the show, it raises the question of how a follow-up exhibition might look in just a few years. The digital and social media revolutions inevitably will upend how the queer community sees and expresses itself, but photography will continue to shape and affirm queer existence.

Ignacio Darnaude, an art scholar and lecturer, is currently developing the docuseries Hiding in Plain Sight: Breaking the Queer Code in Art.