The invisibles: Vintage portraits of love and pride
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The
Invisibles: Vintage Portraits of Love and Pride. Gay Couples in the
Early
Twentieth Century/ Sebastien Lifshitz, Rizzoli 2014, $ 27.50.
A
charming
collection of vintage photos of gay couples privately and often
secretly
celebrating their relationships. This volume is a unique collection of
photographs of gay couples from 1900 to 1960. While this is a time many
now
regard as the deeply closeted "dark ages," these photos show gay
couples who were clearly out (at least for a moment)-some camping it up
for the
cameras while others in loving or clearly domestic poses.
These
photographs
were discovered and collected by the author at flea markets and garage
sales,
the names of the subjects and their photographers lost to time. He was
intrigued by the fact that the pictures show couples posed hand in
hand,
revealing happiness, serenity, and a surprising air of freedom so
unlike the
image of gays suffering in secret or fighting for their rights. This
unique
collection inspired Sebastien Lifshitz to restore to these nameless
couples
their voices in his documentary movie The Invisibles for which he was
awarded
the Cesar Award for Best Documentary in 2013. This
Photoalbum had to be kept secret for 60 years
Sebastien Lifshitz has spent the past 30 years obsessing over vintage
photgraphs and collecting endless amounts of photo albums from flea
markets and
thrift stores around the world.
The
photos were reportedly taken between the 1900s and the 1960s, a
period
which many was said to have taken to calling as “the deeply closeted
‘dark
ages.’”
Twenty years ago, in the Vanves market, Paris, he came across a photo
album of
two old women. “I couldn’t figure out the relationship between them,”
he says.
“Were they sisters? Friends? Lovers?” He asked the seller if he had any
more
pictures of the pair, and he produced 10 more albums. Lifshitz bought
the lot
for ¤50. The shots spanned 30 years, and featured no children or men,
just
these two women, together. “I realised very quickly they were lovers,”
Lifshitz
says. “The way they held each other, the way they looked at each other.”
He then set about
collecting shots of anonymous gay couples from the
start of
the 20th century, and has now put them together in a book, The
Invisibles. “So
much of gay history focuses on the struggle and tragedy of the past,
and of
course that was true, but these images prove the reality was more
complex. They
show a freedom and a happiness for those brave enough to take pictures
of who
they were.
The book includes shots
whose subjects are clearly gay, some who might
have
been gay and others who were playing. “It’s interesting to see
homosexuality in
everyone’s lives in some way,” he says. “It wasn’t an absolute taboo.”
He found
most of his collection in the US and western Europe, but none in the
UK: “Maybe
the British think such photographs have no value, or are too private to
sell.”
Lifshitz
has long been fascinated by what it is to be old and gay. “The
media
focuses only on youth, and Aids killed so many of the generation before
me, so
there is no one to pass down that legacy. A lot of gay people my age
feel a bit
orphaned.”
The project has given him the answers he’s been searching for: “I found
a part
of my past.
In an interview with Huffington Post, Lifshitz said that he wanted to
present
these photographs the way he discovered them – that is, “without any
information like mysterious pictures.” He didn’t even put a caption in
the
photographs simply because he didn’t have the proper information about
each of
them.
This
discovery intrigued Lifshitz and led to him filing a documentary
entitled Les
Invisibles (2012).
Sébastien
Lifshitz Documents Hidden LGBT Relationships From The Early 20th Century
Sébastien
Lifshitz (Wikipeda)
Pictures
of
the week: The Invisibles, by Sébastien Lifshitz
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