Europeana (Web)

Two years ago writer and journalist Neil McKenna introduced an album of Victorian-era photographs in a short weblog entry on Europeana (Web).

This extraordinary album is part of the James Gardiner Collection. On Europeana you can see all leaves of the album – they are completely available online here. The release  took place on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the highlight of LGBT+’s 2018 proud month (Web).

The James Gardiner Collectionis part of the rich queer heritage of the Wellcome Collection (Web).

James Gardiner is a researcher and author who specializes in collecting historical photographs depicting what he calls ‘gay life’.

In an interview – already in 1997 – for „Intependend“ he said the following: „Seeing is believing. Written history can document and argue, fiction can evoke and describe, artists can give us vivid re-interpretations; but only the camera can provide us with proof. More than 150 years of proof that, whatever the official history books may say, whatever your mother told you, whatever the tabloids pedalled as the truth either in 1895 or 1995, we were there. Flirting, posing, kissing, dragging up, stripping off, holding hands, getting caught and (more often) getting away with it.

What makes a photograph gay? How can you have a photographic history of something that was, until very recently, something to hide, not photograph? …“ Read more (Web).