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Roland Barthes, I’ll wager, would have loved this book. David Deitcher writes with elegant complexity, and he has assembled an astonishing archive of images, elegiac emblems that inspire the viewer to re-examine the very nature of photography, of sexuality, and of remembrance. — Wayne Koestenbaum
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MCPHERSON & OLIVER (WILLIAM D. MCPHERSON), SUBJECTS UNKNOWN, CARTE DE VISITE (OVERALL: 4 X 2 1/2"), C. 1863. INSCRIBED: "JOHN" AND "FRANK." BACKMARK ON VERSO READS: "MCPHERSON & OLIVER PHOTOGRAPHERS"
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Reproducing more than one hundred never-before-published vintage photographs dating from shortly after the introduction of photography in the United States to the end of World War I, this groundbreaking book focuses attention on the evidence of a kind of physical intimacy between men that challenges the conventional view of the Victorian era as more inhibited than our own.
David Deitcher's provocative text combines historical research, social
observation, pictorial analysis, and
personal reflection to explore the nature of same-sex affection between men during that period and the meaning of its ambiguous photographic legacy for people today.
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PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN, SUBJECTS UNKNOWN, GELATIN SILVER PRINT, REAL PHOTO POSTCARD (5 1/2 X 3 1/2"), C. 1907. INSCRIPTION READS: "HAVE NOT RECEIVED/AN ANSWER YET/JUST A FOOLISH PICTURE/ONE IN RETURN PLEAS. 'L.'" POSTMARKED ON VERSO: "FORD [?] CITY, APRIL 13 PM 1907" |
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PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN, HENRY SCHELBERGER AND ARTHUR ANDERSON, GELATIN SILVER PRINT, REAL PHOTO POSTCARD (5 1/2 X 3 1/2"), C. 1915.
INSCRIPTION ON VERSON READS: "HENRY SCHELBERGER AND ARTHUR ANDERSON" |
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We now understand that the Victorians had a surprisingly broad-minded attitude toward intimate friendships: men and women were in many ways encouraged to establish intense, even passionate, bonds with members of their own sex. These ties could be romantic in ways that we would identify as sexual but that Victorians, in their state of pre-Freudian innocence, would not. A considerable range of same-sex relationships between men was acknowledged and sanctioned, effectively shielding forms of physical contact that gradually would be identified and stigmatized as perverse, if not criminal—thus setting the stage for the end of these fluid, romantic friendships and their photographic legacy.
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Addressing the persistent ambiguity of these portraits from his perspective as a gay man, Deitcher reflects on the desire they elicit among individuals who know of their existence and care about their fate. For the vast majority of the vernacular photographs in this book are anonymous cultural cast-offs, having been dispersed following the deaths of the sitters to resurface at flea markets, photograph fairs, and modest antique shops
Enthusiastic collectors—most of them gay—have rescued these enigmatic objects from oblivion. Dear Friends investigates the social conditions that made these photographs possible and examines both their abandonment and subsequent retrieval by those who cherish them as rare historical visual evidence of love between men.
108 photographs in full color
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PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN,
SUBJECTS UNKNOWN,
TINTYPE, (3 3/8 X 2 1/2"), C. 1885 |
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