Rise and Resist
Photography After Stonewall
If the building facades and sidewalks of New York City could talk, the memories they recanted would saturate the air waves. The emotional toll would wring us dry, and decades after rebellion stood fast at Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, the fight persists. The photographs from that summer day in 1969 are as impactful today as they were fifty years ago.
“Art After Stonewall, 1969–1989,” an exhibition presented by Grey Art Gallery, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, and New York University, and supported by small, related shows at the New York Historyical Society and the Brooklyn, ensure that the feeling of resistance reverberates in this era of post-truth and fake news.
The burden of proof isn’t heavy at all when you have evidence like this, when you have memories like these.
Our politicians may conveniently forget, but New York remembers. The people remember. Our cultural institutions–museums, art galleries, theater, publications that still believe in fact checkers–they document what propaganda sweeps under its ever-expanding rug. And we remember. And every single person who takes the time to ponder these images of the past, which are so close to the present–we hope you will remember, too, that this fight is far from over.
Onward.
