What kinds of images come to mind when you think of queer photography, of queer life? Nan Goldin’s nocturnal snapshots of queens in Boston, Berlin, and New York City, or of friends sunbathing in Provincetown? George Dureau’s neoclassical portraits of New Orleans hustlers? Studio pictures by Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Peter Hujar, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Wolfgang Tillmans, Collier Schorr? Are these photographs journalistic, documents of queer life and community? Do they capture the AIDS crisis — its urgent street protests and its innumerable funerals — or Fire Island’s mid-70s bliss?
The Gay Essay, a collection of photographs by Anthony Friedkin now on view at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York, predates almost all of this work. Friedkin began the documentary photo essay in 1969, the same year the Stonewall riots united LGBTQ+ New Yorkers in pride. The Los Angeles-based photographer was then just 19 (though he’d already freelanced for Magnum) and set out to create a photojournalistic record of queerness’s public emergence on the West coast. Shot between 1969 and 1973, The Gay Essay marks a moment at which images of queer culture, community, and life began crossing into more mainstream consciousness.
“At first, I felt a bit threatened by the whole idea of exposing myself to a culture I didn’t understand,” Friedkin wrote at the time. “I came to learn that the majority of the attitudes that I had been brought up with concerning homosexuals were false, and that gay people have been one of the most suppressed, abused, misunderstood groups since the beginning of modern civilization.”
Friedkin’s images, taken in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, are certainly evidence of such abuse. One of The Gay Essay‘s most poignant photos shows Troy Perry, a reverend and queer activist, standing amid the wreckage of his burned church. Friedkin captured what we now might consider almost stereotypical spaces and faces: drag queens, machismo hustlers, public bathrooms, bars, underground film theaters, icons like Divine and Jean Harlow. Yet, The Gay Essay is also full of regular people and regular moments — experiencing eroticism and tenderness. It captures people with the courage to express themselves as they wish to be every day.
‘The Gay Essay’ is on view at Daniel Cooney Fine Art through March 4, 2017. As part of ‘The View From Here: Creating Meaningful art in Hostile Times,’ an ongoing lecture series programmed alongside the exhibition’s opening, the gallery will host an artist’s talk tonight with Bryson Rand and Vincent Tiley. More information here.
Credits
Text Emily Manning
Photography Anthony Friedkin