French film auteur Sébastien Lifshitz has combed through vintage photos at garage sales and flea markets and eBay for more than 20 years, amassing a collection of old queer life. We have no idea who the people in his pictures are, but we have at least a little glimpse into a world that was, somehow, preserved.
Gazing through these photos introduces a new mystery: who took them, and why did such potentially risky images survive after leaving the photographer’s hands?
The photos were part of his book The Invisibles: Vintage Portraits of Love and Pride. It came out last year, but these photos share a timeless quality that’s worth revisiting any day.
Pete Sims
This work is really important. Thank you!
FD
The guy smiling at the camera in the first pic is HOT. Kinda makes me sad he’s probably dead now.
Glücklich
Mr. Glücklich and I received this book as a wedding present. It’s cute.
My fellow San Franciscans see a similar bunch of photos at least once a year when SFGate trots out its “Vintage Affectionate Men” (or whatever they call it) slideshow. Probably all the Hearst papers run it.
Brandon Romero
preserve white gay men’s community.. not the all inclusive gay community of multiple identities… we are not just one thing… do better next time.
ProfessorMoriarty
How lovely and yet somehow humbling these photos are.
Kangol
@Brandon Romero: I hear you and assume it was the limited archive this particular collector Lifschitz was combing through that whited out (our) gay history. There certainly are images of queer people from the past who are not white. It would be great to see a wider array of people, because our past is complex and multi-hued, going back to the colonial era in the US at least, and certainly much older in other parts of the globe.
jimontp
@Kangol: If you’re interested, the website with hundreds of archieves of Homo History is
http://www.homohistory.com/2013/07/cary-grant-and-randolph-scott-hollywood.html
Great headline story on Cary Grant.
If you click on the years in the achieves, there are plenty of photos of couples that seem to us now as gay. There are several Black men, never with a white man, as far as I can remember. I don’t think there are photos of Native American men or Asian men, but I’m sure that if anyone sent photos, they’d be included.
hughhai
I’m troubled that the people in these photographs are interpreted as queer simply for displaying same-sex affection. This is a special niche of heteronormativity. Unless the identities of these people are confirmed, interpreting these photographs as evidence of queer lives is simply a product of confirmation bias. I agree that it is important to rediscover erased queer histories, but cross dressing, nudity, or physical displays of affection do not confirm anyone as queer. In favor of reconstructing credible histories, isn’t it better to error on the side of fewer but accurate representations over constructing fictions to suit our political needs? Otherwise, this work is no better than the false histories constructed to obscure and discredit our identities.
mlbumiller
that is right people…… bitch and complain about race and possible reading between lines….. can you not just enjoy the pictures and keep you fucking negative shit to yourself.
Jerie Ragsac
just because it has half naked men in it doesn’t make it’s all gay. you’re labeling normal photos. but whatever butters your bun, floats your boat, tickles your pickles…
notevenwrong
Was I the only one who saw that there were women too?
martinbakman
@hughhai: I also questioned whether all the subjects were queer yet I still consider all these images as significant.
Daggerman
…you see it all was going on exactly the same way it is now.. Why oh why does the human race always seem to fail at taking note of history? I mean if we’d done so much so much quicker would be better now…all the people who have, and still are protesting against homosexuality are so utterly repressed…or just need to grow up and except reality..
Clark35
@hughhai: Some are bi, gay, or lesbian but in the first picture they do not look like a couple and just look like models.
DonW
I think this is a lovely effort and I’m sorry so many people can only find the negative. If you think these examples are too white or too heteronormative, feel free to spend 20 years of your own combing flea markets and make your own collection.
Will L
We are indeed fortunate these days to have the internet and so much information at our fingertips. This is a wonderful collection. There are several sites that have similar postings and I wish I had seen them many years ago when I was young. It would have made my adolescent years seem more “normal.”
Kidnap
@Brandon Romero: Brandon, please go back to your societal human history and consider that not everyone was able to pay for a picture to be made, and moreover enlarged and printed. Surely Black, Latino or Asian people were, and still are, from a much conservative cultural background; It is still more difficult to be Gay as a Black man now than it is for a White man, so take the risk of such obvious picture with another male was certainly more difficult for them, hence, less material is available to us now. I’m certain the collector didn’t choose white folks in purpose. As we do not know for sure, let’s not aggravate.
Kidnap
As for the others that doubt all of these pictures are queer, I’m pretty sure I can tell a Gay from a Straight, because I know my people and thank God, up to now I was never wrong picking my lovers, anywhere. The guy in the tub has his left leg under the right leg on the other guy (otherwise he miss one leg) and that’s pretty intimate. for the guys in robe, very obvious, the colorized boys are also G.A.Y.S in a manner they probably lived their difference with difficulties. I’m not so good with the ladies, but I’m positive the last married couple are really lesbians. You can tel the emotion in the bride’s look, and mrs groom infuse with desire for her new wife. No, I’m sure these people were not just pals, and were not in costumes.