Soon they began actively looking for these photos that spoke to them and felt they were on “some kind of rescue mission.” They’ve accumulated more than 3,000 photographs that they found in shoe boxes, estate sales, family archives, flea markets, and online auctions, and the collection includes daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, photo postcards, and simple snapshots from all over the world: Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, and the United States (with a considerable amount sourced from Bulgaria). Taking such a photo, during a time when they would have been less understood than they would today, was not without risk.” … The open expression of the love that they shared also revealed a moment of determination. The couple explain in the book’s foreword that they began collecting over 20 years ago, when they discovered a vintage photo dating from somewhere around the 1920s in an antique shop in Dallas, that they thought was “one of a kind.” As they write: “These two men, in front of a house, were embracing and looking at one another in a way that only two people in love would do. The book, subtitled A Photographic History of Men in Love, is a visual narrative that reveals tender moments between men - 19th-century working-class guys, fashionably dressed businessmen, university students, soldiers, sailors, and many more - through benign, vernacular portraiture. But I was reminded of this impulse and drive to collect obscure photos when I flipped through the pages of Loving, a gorgeous new monograph composed of hundreds of photos of men from the 1850s to 1950s amassed by Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell. Or why it continues to hold us spellbound. For many, these images represent a small fragment of LGBT history that was repressed and concealed for so long.Now that we are bombarded by billions of images and everyone is a wanna-be avant-garde pocket picture maker, it’s easy for us to forget that until very recently photography was rejected as something with lesser aesthetic value.
There is little information about the individuals in the photos and it is quite extraordinary that these images still survive - as many old photos of homosexual couples are believed to have been purposely destroyed by family members.Īlthough it is unknown whether the people in these unique photos were related, gay or just friends - the tender and close relationship between the men pictured is poignantly evident.
The images, taken from various websites, capture Victorian and early-twentieth century males in intimate positions - and showing a daring amount of openness with one another for the time. At a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence and harsh sentences were brought down upon gay men, these images of male affection from the 19th century are truly remarkable.Įmbracing each other, holding hands and reclining together, these incredible black-and-white photographs provide a rare glimpse into men showing physical love to other men in the 1800s and early 1900s.