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Homo Riot
This slideshow features the work of Los Angeles street artist Homo Riot, whose moniker captures the rage and rebelliousness that drive his work and activism. The slideshow presents 16 images accompanied by commentary that contextualizes the artist's work.
Nell CarterA dynamic performer on stage, television, film, and record, Nell Carter (1948-2003) built a successful and versatile show business career; only after her death was her longtime relationship with a woman revealed to the public.
The French gay liberation movement was born during the early 1970s on the foundation of a courageous, if conservative, homophile movement and the thrust of a massive wave of social activism.
Ferzan OzpetekThanks to the critical and commercial success of most of his films, Turkish-born Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek (b. 1959) has challenged the celluloid closet that silenced or marginalized queerness in Italian film.
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Photography: Gay Male |
| Although sparse in images documenting the gay community, Pre-Stonewall Gay Male Photography blurs the boundaries between art, erotica, and social history. Post-Stonewall Gay Male Photography merits recognition for its contribution to fine art, documentation, photo-journalism, and advertising, as well as erotica. | ||
Crawford Barton (1943-1993) was a photographer who captured the blossoming of an openly gay culture in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s. His work blurs the lines between fine art and documentary, the explicitly sexual and the quietly intimate, and between the personal and the political.
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| Sir Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), the celebrated English photographer of cultural icons and royalty, described himself as a "terrible, terrible homosexualist." | ||
F. Holland Day (1864-1933) created homoerotic photographs notable for their relation to fin de siècle cultural interests.
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| George Dureau (b. 1930) is best known for his male figure studies, narrative paintings, and for his black-and-white photographs, which often feature street youths, dwarfs, and amputees. | ||
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was primarily a painter, but soon after photographic technology became available, he became an active maker of photographic nude studies to use as drawing aids in the classroom, a radically open policy that engendered loyalty from his students but harsh criticism from his academy colleagues.
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Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) was one of the most important black photographers of the late twentieth century.
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| Gilbert and George (Gilbert Proesch, b. 1943, and George Passmore, b. 1942) are two of the most important avant-garde artists on the international art scene of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. Their challenging and controversial work explores themes ranging from city life, religion, scatology, and homosexuality. | ||
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931) was one of the earliest photographers of the male nude. His best known images--those enormously popular among the Victorians--depict nude or scantily clad boys in mythological scenes, but many of his other images are ahistorical, elegant studies of the male body.
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Sunil Gupta (b. 1953) is an internationally prominent artist who has gained recognition for his achievements as a photographer, curator, and cultural activist. In all of these endeavors, Gupta has explored multiple sexual, racial, and cultural identities and challenged restrictive conventions.
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David Hockney (b. 1937) established himself as one of the liveliest and most versatile visual artists of his generation in the 1960s. Through the years since, he has expanded that reputation with prodigious productivity.
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Horst P. Horst (1906-1999), a German-born naturalized American society and fashion photographer, created some of the most memorable images of the mid-twentieth century.
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Peter Hujar (1934-1987) created stark, stunning, affecting, and sometimes disturbing images in black and white. His oeuvre ranged from portraits of famous writers and artists to homoerotic subjects and pictures of domestic animals.
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| Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is an African-American mixed-media artist who often conflates issues of race and gender. | ||
| Herbert List (1903-1975) created images of young men that are at once homoerotic and avant garde in technique and sensibility. Today, List is probably best known for his posthumously published book Junge Männer, which contains over seventy images of idyllic young men and boys lying in the sun, swimming, wrestling, or innocently staring into the camera's lens. | ||
George Platt Lynes (1907-1955) was an American photographer whose greatest
work may have been his homoerotic dance images and male nudes.
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| Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) created controversial images that typically combine rigorously formal composition with extreme and often sadomasochistic subject matter. | ||
| Duane Michals (b. 1932) is an American photographer who represents same-sex love and spirituality as compellingly as he does same-sex desire. | ||
Stathis Orphanos (b.1940) and his life and business partner Ralph Sylvester (b. 1934) are well-known for their meticulously executed books, which are avidly collected by lovers of fine printing. Orphanos is also a photographer who created portraits of many key figures in glbtq culture during the second half of the twentieth century.
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| Pierre et Gilles (founded 1976) create painted photographs that capture the nuances of modern gay life. | ||
George Quaintance (1902-1957) was one of the most influential figures in a unique American style of art and one of the most flamboyant and interesting gay characters for four decades of the twentieth century.
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| Herb Ritts (1952-2002) is best known for his magazine covers, celebrity photos, and ad campaigns for prestigious clients. | ||
Mel Roberts (b. 1923) is a photographer and activist who captured the California Dream in his images of Southern California hikers, bikers, surfers, and skateboarders during the 1960s and 1970s.
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Jack Robinson (1928-1997) was a Mississippi-born photographer who came to prominence in the 1960s as a result of the stunning fashion and celebrity photographs he shot for such magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. He created striking images of the era's cultural icons, particularly young actors, artists, and musicians.
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Francesco Scavullo (1929-2004) is best known for his work in fashion and for his magazine covers, especially those he created for Cosmopolitan, but he was also a masterful portrait photographer.
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Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968) is an important contemporary photographer who synthesizes classic photographic genres. Tillmans' representations of gay men are an important aspect of his art.
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Arthur Tress (b. 1940) creates uncompromising, poetic images that are the stuff of dreams. Some of his work captures the pleasures of male-male desire while his Hospital series (1984-1987) garishly depicts the horrors of the medical system's treatment of AIDS patients.
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| Bruce Weber (b. 1946), one of the world's most popular photographers, has re-envisioned male beauty. Working for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and a slew of other designers, Weber became one of the preeminent photographers of the fashion industry in the 1980s and continues to be one of the world's most popular commercial photographers. | ||
| Minor White (1908-1976), one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the twentieth century, created fascinating photographs of male nudes but did not exhibit them for fear of scandal. | ||
David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) used his art to indict those he held responsible for the AIDS epidemic.
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Sir Francis BaconHOMOSEXUAL ENGLISH PHILOSOPHER WHO CONDEMNED HOMOSEXUALITY IN HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WORK, 1561
George Gordon, Lord ByronBISEXUAL POET WHO ENCODED HOMOSEXUALITY IN HIS WORK, 1788
AUTHOR OF ELEGANT POETRY, ESSAYS, PLAYS, AND LITERARY CRITICISM, 1922
THE FIRST OPENLY GAY CANDIDATE ELECTED TO STATE-LEVEL OFFICE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1944
ONE OF HISTORY'S GREATEST FILMMAKERS, 1898
Frederick the GreatKING OF PRUSSIA WHOSE HOMOSEXUALITY WAS AN OPEN SECRET, 1712
Gustav III, King of SwedenKING OF SWEDEN WHO ENCOURAGED ART AND CULTURE TO FLOWER, 1746
W. Somerset MaughamPROLIFIC WRITER WHO DECLARED HIMSELF IN THE VERY FIRST ROW OF THE SECOND RATE, 1874
Virginia WoolfENGLISH NOVELIST FOR WHOM PASSIONATE FRIENDSHIPS WITH WOMEN WERE ESSENTIAL IN BOTH HER LIFE AND WORK, 1882
Peter TatchellCONTROVERSIAL BRITISH ACTIVIST WHO HAS BEEN A PROPONENT OF GLBT RIGHTS SINCE THE EARLY 1970s, 1952
CONTROVERSIAL CONSERVATIVE AUSTRIAN POLITICIAN, 1950
Ellen DeGeneresZANY COMIC AND THE FIRST LESBIAN TO STAR AS A LESBIAN IN HER OWN TELEVISION SHOW, 1958
Anyda Marchant (Sarah Aldridge)NOVELIST AND PIONEERING LESBIAN-FEMINIST PUBLISHER, 1911
PROLIFIC AUTHOR BEST KNOWN FOR FOUR VOLUMES OF SHORT FICTION THAT ARE NOW CONSIDERED CLASSICS IN GAY LITERATURE, 1947
Alan CummingAWARD-WINNING ACTOR AND SUPPORTER OF GLBTQ CAUSES, 1965
ColetteONE OF FRANCE'S MOST BELOVED AUTHORS, 1873
James Richmond BarthéPOPULAR AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCULPTOR ASSOCIATED WITH THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE, 1901
CULTURAL CRITIC, FILMMAKER, AND FICTION WRITER, 1933
This feature lists people about whom glbtq.com has both entries and complete birth dates. Each person listed has made a significant contribution to or had a significant impact on glbtq culture or history. Most are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, though some are either heterosexual or cannot be adequately characterized using any of these labels.
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New York's Museum of Modern Art's annual International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, a two-week showcase of documentary films, will open on February 16, 2012 with a presentation of Jim Hubbard's United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012), the first feature-length documentary to explore ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) from a historical perspective.
David Kato.
The first anniversary of the murder of Ugandan activist David Kato has been marked by a gathering in Kampala to honor the martyred leader. In addition, filmmakers Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall have released portions of their documentary about his life and work.
Peter Tatchell in 2004.
On January 25, 2011, the sixtieth birthday of Peter Tatchell, Britons are celebrating his indefatigable activism. Since the 1970s, Tatchell has been in the forefront of the struggle for equal rights in the U.K., often employing confrontational tactics that have brought him criticism as well as acclaim.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker.
More than 80 mayors of U.S. cities, from 25 different states, have signed a pledge written by Freedom to Marry affirming their support for marriage equality. Members of the new coalition, known as "Mayors for the Freedom to Marry," spoke at a news conference on January 21, 2012 in Washington, D.C. They were in the capital to attend the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Pekka Haavisto (right) with partner Antonio Flores in a 2010 television interview (YouTube video still).
As a result of the first round of the Finnish presidential election on January 22, 2012, Pekka Haavisto, openly gay leader of the Green League, will face Sauli Niinistö of the National Coalition Party in the February 5, 2012 run-off. With 100% of the votes tallied, Niinistö, the favorite, received 37% of the vote and Haavisto 19%, with the remainder split between six other candidates.
A promotional image for "Barbara Hammer: The Fearless Frame."
In February 2012, London's Tate Modern presents a major survey of the films of Barbara Hammer. "Barbara Hammer: The Fearless Frame" will include screenings of early, rarely seen Super-8 films, an evening of free expanded cinema performances in the Turbine Hall, an event in response to Hammer's work by artist Emily Roysdon, and several events featuring artists and speakers drawn from across Europe and North America, who testify to the powerful creative community Hammer has inspired.
On January 20, 2012, three Muslim men from Derby were convicted of inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation after they distributed leaflets calling for gay people to be killed.
Gavin Creel performs "Noise," an anthem for equality (YouTube video still).
Formed by young Broadway performers Gavin Creel and Rory O'Malley, and production assistant Jenny Kanelos, in the aftermath of the passage of California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage in 2008, Broadway Impact is an organization composed of actors, directors, stage managers, producers, and theater buffs who are united by the simple belief that anyone who wants to should be able to get married.
Luisa Paster and Harriet Bernstein (detail from a photograph on ACLU's website).
A New Jersey administrative law judge has finally issued a ruling in a long-running case that tests the state's Law Against Discrimination. The case originated when the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association denied Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster the use of a boardwalk pavilion for their civil union ceremony in 2007. In a decision released on January 13, 2012, Judge Solomon A. Metzger ruled that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, violated state law when it refused to rent the pavilion to the lesbian couple. The case hinged on the fact that the Association had agreed to make the facility available to the public on a non-discriminatory basis in exchange for a tax exemption.
As we celebrate the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we must also remember the contributions of Bayard Rustin to the civil rights movement. One of the key African-American civil rights activists of the twentieth century, Rustin and his legacy were long obscured because of embarrassment over his homosexuality and early involvement in the Communist Party.
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Film Actors: Lesbian and Bisexual Female
Spotlight: French Theater Part 2
Symbols
The Photography of Laurie Toby Edison
Nineteenth-Century American Art
Eric Patterson on Brokeback Mountain
Modern Drama and Dramatists
Confessions of a Blog Addict: Or Why I Love to Hate GetReligion.org and FamilyScholars.org
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