Gay photographs

100 Years of Photographs of Gay Men in Love

Hundreds of photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries extend a glimpse at the life of gay men during a time when their love was illegal almost everywhere.

A beautiful community of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a modern book that applications a visual glimpse of what existence may have been like for those men, who went against the commandment to find cherish in one another’s arms. In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, hundreds of images inform the story of love and fondness 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 2,800 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 Together Kingdom among the cache.

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A beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a new guide that offers a visual glimpse of what life may acquire been like for those men, who went against the rule to find love in one another’s arms. In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, hundreds of images tell the story of cherish 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 2,800 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 Together Kingdom among the cache.

What accomplish images of men in adoration during a time when it was illegal tell us? What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together? Flipping through the book, it wasn’t that I felt that I learned a great deal about entity LGBTQ, but what gave me comfort was the feeling that we

Two Naked Young Men Embracing, Close-up

Ed Freeman

Quentin Crisp

Bettmann

Portrait Of Young Person With Ambiguous

Svetikd

Cropped Hands Of Lesbian Couple Holding

Malte Mueller

Couple Dancing Ballet #2

Oleg66

Two Gay Men Walking To Taxi Rank

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Two Mans Walking Along The Seashore

Casarsa

Gay Pride

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Hulton Archive

Two Naked Young Men Embracing, Close-up #1

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Protesters For And Against Gay Marriage

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Leather And Fetish Enthusiasts Converge #2

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Sexy Male Prom Queen Cigarette Drag

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The Queer And Lesbian Pride Pride On

New York Daily News Archive

Christopher Street Day In Berlin

Carsten Koall

Hands Forming A Heart Shape With Sunset

Teraphim

Gay Couple Sitting In The Mountains

Westend61

Christopher Street Day In Berlin #1

Carsten Koall

Nation Mourns Victims Of Worst Mass

David Mcnew

Demonstrators Protesting Treatment

Bettmann

Gay And Lesbian Pride Parade

Bettmann

 

These Photos Capture the “Gay Paradises” of 1980s America

Art & PhotographyIn Their Words

As his new guide is released, Nicholas Blair talks about capturing the heat and hedonism of the queer communities in 1980s San Francisco and Recent York

TextMadeleine Pollard

In the late 70s, lgbtq+ life began to spill out onto the streets of San Francisco’s Castro District, rapidly eclipsing the hippies as the most apparent counter-culture movement of the day. People came to look and be seen, tease, cruise, and congregate in common as a collective. “It was this outburst of pent-up celebration,” says Nicholas Blair, who was living in a free-love arts commune across town at the time. “It felt like the door of tolerance was opening and people were leaning in, hard, to live as their true selves.”

With a Leica rangefinder camera loaned to him by a childhood friend, Blair walked through this so-called “gay paradise”, capturing everything from the mundane to the profane. He photographed individuals dressed head-to-toe in fetish gear, others who preferred to communicate in more subtle codes and winks, and the everyday passersby who moved around them. Between 1979 and 1986, he followed