THE GAY ESSAY
Anthony Friedkin chronicles a community
Los Angeles photographer Anthony Friedkin began working on The Gay Essay in 1969, at age nineteen, intending it to be an eighteen-month documentary project. He started his work as an intrigued outsider and ended it four years later as a intimate and important ally of the LGBT community in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The moving exhibition of The Gay Essay now at Daniel Cooney Fine Art is a rare opportunity to view fifty of Anthony Friedkin’s resulting gelatin-silver print photographs.
Friedkin began The Gay Essay at a tumultuous time for sexual freedom. 1969 was the same year as the Stonewall Riots in New York. The sexual revolution was just getting started (iconic gay clubs like The Anvil and crossover clubs like Studio 54 didn’t even exist yet). Friedkin’s images capture a very specific time in queer history—the moments of protest, celebration, tragedy, unrest, self-empowerment and strength in the lives of individuals on the forefront of social change. “I wanted to photograph gay people who weren’t afraid to tell the world that they were gay, who were out the door every day, every moment of their life, who were living a gay life. I wanted to celebrate what I saw as a sense of their personal freedom,” he has said.
The Gay Essay is full of beautiful images, some sweet, some sad, others powerful or provocative. In his title for this project Friedkin calls the images “vintage photographs,” and many do feel like they are from another time. But in our uncertain climate, the LGBT community is facing new and unexpected challenges. The Gay Essay is an important reminder of the strength and dignity of the people who got us to where we are today.
