Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet into the Stonewall Era

by Roxane Gay (Introduction), Jason Baumann (Editor), Kay Tobin Lahusen (Photographer), Diana Davies (Photographer)

Overview

More than one hundred vivid photographs of the LGBTQ revolution—and its public and intimate moments in the 1960s and 70s—that lit a fire still burning today.

A ragtag group of women protesting behind a police line in the rain. A face in a crowd holding a sign that says, “Hi Mom, Guess What!” at a gay rights rally. Two lovers kissing under a tree. These indelible images are among the thousands housed in the New York Public Library’s archive of photographs of 1960s and ’70s LGBTQ history from photojournalists Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies. Lahusen is a pioneering photojournalist who captured pivotal moments in the LGBTQ civil rights movement. Davies, in turn, is one of the most important photojournalists who documented gay, lesbian, and trans liberation, as well as civil rights, feminist, and antiwar movements.

This powerful collection—which captures the energy, humor, and humanity of the groundbreaking protests that surrounded the Stonewall Riots—celebrates the diversity of this rights movement, both in the subjects of the photos and by presenting Lahusen and Davies’ distinctive work and perspectives in conversation with each other. A preface, captions, and part introductions from curator Jason Baumann provide illuminating historical context. And an introduction from Roxane Gay, best-selling author of Hunger, speaks to the continued importance of these iconic photos of resistance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324002062
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	802,536
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Roxane Gay is the author of five books, including the best-selling Bad Feminist. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Jason Baumann coordinates the New York Public Library’s LGBT Initiative, for which he has curated multiple exhibitions, including one on the photography of Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies and their historical context. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

01/28/2019

Baumann, coordinator for the New York Public Library’s LGBT Initiative, brings together the photographs of two chroniclers of the 1960s and 1970s gay rights movement, Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies, in this moving collection that accompanies an upcoming exhibit at the New York Public Library. Baumann describes Lahusen’s photos as “working for rights-based inclusion” while Davies’s “called for the radical questioning of society as a whole.” The photos—candids taken in homes, at protests, at parties—document an evolution of activism (mostly in major cities on the East Coast), a burgeoning public pride, and a diverse group of figures: Barbara Gittings, Lahusen’s activist partner (and frequent subject) who participated in events including a 1965 march on the White House protesting federal bans on hiring gays and lesbians and a “Hug a Homosexual” booth at a 1971 American Library Association conference; Frank Kameny, the first openly gay candidate for Congress; and Martha P. Johnson, cofounder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) and a protester at Stonewall. Baumann organizes the more than 100 photographs into four sections, each about a “mode of resistance”: visibility, love, pride, and protest. Baumann’s brief captions provide details about the actions and lives of the players that shaped history with their bravery. This collection provides important archival visuals to a still-underreported slice of history. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"These beautiful photographs and the text that accompanies them provide a dynamic window into the birth of the modern gay rights movement. They enliven the uncommonly courageous men and women who refused to accept the disparaging labels of their time. For those of us lucky enough to live in more accepting times, this is crucial history. But it is also a record of the fact that these people, in among their gestures of nobility, were fun and funny and lively and romantic; in short it shows, as nothing has before, the touching, vulnerable humanity of the people who remade our society."

Andrew Solomon

"If you’re curious about what that first march looked like in 1970, or the names and faces of the earliest activists who got us from there to here, there is no better place to start…Superb."

Guardian - Charles Kaiser

"Nearly every photograph brims with stories deserving their own book, thus making this volume but a rich beginning."

Booklist

"What a surprise! Love and Resistance is a delicious collection of photographs, dozens of them never before published. Here in the early years of the gay movement are the many people, now famous or not, playing out their roles in what was then a barely inaugurated rebellion. The photos are the work of two gifted artists, Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies, both of whom wonderfully capture the excitement and exuberance of the birth of gay liberation."

Martin Duberman author of Stonewall

★ 2018-12-09

A pictorial time capsule from the pivotal days of a budding gay rights movement.

Baumann, coordinator of the New York Public Library's LGBT Initiative, presents a dramatic collection of images, drawn from the career archives of photo-documentarians Lahusen and Davies, charting the rise of grassroots gay activism from the mid-1960s to the mid-'70s. It was a time when LGBT activists took to the streets of New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New Jersey to creatively and defiantly demonstrate against intolerance and inequality and whose "vision and courage changed our world." Lahusen was active in early lesbian solidarity organizations while Davies was best known for chronicling the feminist, peace, and social justice activism movements of the era. Their photographs, accompanied by Baumann's commentary and descriptions, represent separate perspectives within a unified theme of LGBT equality throughout each of the book's four sections. "Visibility" displays images of a wide variety of gays and lesbians in the primes of their careers and endeavors; "Love" celebrates the power of community and affection in the face of societal hate; "Pride" memorializes the sacred queer spaces where activism, collaboration, and solidarity flourished; and "Protest" demarcates the demonstrations and rebellion against rampant gay oppression. Iconic activists like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Barbara Gittings, and Ernestine Eckstein share space with gay writers, artists, performers, and media founders. Haunting and arresting, the photos illustrate a historic American era when same-sex affection was forbidden in public and considered both a mental illness and an atrocity. A literary celebration commemorating the 50-year anniversary of the epic Stonewall riots, the book is elegiac yet also provides a reflective and hopeful reminder for future generations that change and promise can arise from struggle and sacrifice. Though the book is a reflection of a different age and struggle, it is also timely given that LGBT freedoms remain ever endangered within the current political climate.

A moving queer tapestry honoring a beleaguered movement's legacy through art, veneration, and gravitas.

Kirkus Reviews