19th century lesbian and gay portrait faces

An illustrated compendium of queer people in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead of being othered or photographed by people not within their community, either in a street photography or photo journalistic way, or even medically, they were intent on taking back the narrative.

THE EMERGENCE of both the lesbian and the woman artist as recognizable demographics in 19th-century Europe and the United States was the product of revolutionary developments in the realms of civil rights and image-making. Since the midth century, photography has served as a powerful tool for examining concepts of gender, sexuality, and self-expression.

Henri Cartier Bresson was supposedly a straight man taking the photographs, but there are a handful of examples where queer people sort of caught his eye in the street and seemed to him to be interesting subjects — and sure enough, they are.

In Love and Invisible

A George Dureau portrait, circa and an Oscar Gustav Rylander portrait from — both present very similar aesthetics and typical poses, displaying homoerotic physique photography as a kind of unchanging art. Take a self-guided tour of LGBTQ+ artists on your next visit—many of these works are on view at the National.

Where better to search for a history of queer visual culture than one of the oldest and largest collections of photography in the world? Eddie Squires: From scrapbook no. INT: What do you hope readers take away from this view on the history of photography through a queer lens?

The works of artists from French 19th-century animal painter Rosa Bonheur to American pop artist Andy Warhol have changed the course of art history. Reading "Calling The Shots: Queering More from Features.

Lesbian Culture and Visual

Encompassing works by photographers ranging from Cecil Beaton and Julia Margaret Cameron to Zanele Muholi and Nan Goldin, the book has woven together lens-based practices and practitioners from across the globe in a display of image making from the midth century to today.

And photographers Nancy Andrews, Sunil Gupta, and Zanele Muholi use their images to advocate for and celebrate their queer communities. Horst P. Can you tell us a bit about its significance? The immediacy and accessibility of the medium has played a transformative role in the gradual proliferation of homosocial, homoerotic, and homosexual imagery.

ZC: Yes, that whole thing about some things just kind of staying the same. So these images really meant a lot to me, and Marvel Harris is just a fantastic emerging artist! When you look at queer work made by queer people like this, you can just feel the power and the authenticity in it.

Despite periods of severe homophobia, when many photographs depicting queer life were suppressed or. The Henri Cartier Bresson photograph we have in the book is a great example of that. If people can access trans narratives, pride and joy, through our public collection, then that would be an amazing thing.

These hidden discoveries of the more subtle queer representation in the collection can feel magical. He made this incredible photo book called Marvelfrom which a photograph of his top surgery scars titled manhood appears at the start of the body section of the book.

They had a friend who worked in an AIDS hospital and let them break into the X-ray room one night for the two men to take erotic images with the machine — the series is of them basically having sex in the AIDS hospital. The ascent of the first feminist movements, the opening of art academies to women, and the democratization of photography converged to create new conditions of possibility.

ZC: Yes, absolutely. Among the dozens of works on display in a new show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is one that is possibly the first depiction of a same sex couple—the silhouettes of Sylvia. The collection enclosed in Calling The Shots has been structured by thematic chapters titled by terms such as: Icons, Body and Staged, providing a deliberately non-linear and expansive view over more than a century of photography.

By doing so, these subjects reclaimed their image as gay men at the time. I would love to know your thoughts on the word as something that can hold a whole host of identities. There is such a visual overlap. Each generation finds fresh, new and exciting ways to keep certain traditions alive.