Arthur Tress

These are some recent portraits of several friends in New York and San Francisco.

I use a Hasselblad camera and 120 Tri-x film and natural light. I think it best to keep it simple, but sometimes I bring a prop that I think might open up the subject’s personality.

While I often try and reveal something about my models, I have found recently that my portraits are like mirrors reflecting different aspects of my own  personality and concerns, more then the people I am photographing, which is not surprising as I have been doing this for six decades.

www.arthurtress.com

Ruth Bernhard

These are some recent portraits of several friends in Explorer of form and light, the artist reveals her deeply personal vision which reaches beyond ordinary perceptions. Her images of nudes, still lives in common objects are seen as a new vision. Ruth made the ordinary extraordinary with her intuitive powers of perception. 

Robert Burrill

Trading his paint brush for a camera, Burrill learned photography along with his high school students while making a film with Ruth Bernhard. Capturing pictures at the edge of the light, composition is foremost while remembering the joys of childhood in the subject. Using intuition sparks the light of inspiration most evident in his photographs and filmmaking. 

rbarts.com

Hal Fischer

The inclusion of Hal Fischer’s photographs in Under the Big Black Sun: California Art, 1974-81 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2011 generated new attention in Hal Fischer’s gay-identified art. Since then, his seminal photo text work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Museums that have acquired Fischer’s work include the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The J. Paul Getty Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow. Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies, a comprehensive monograph, was published by Gallery 16 Editions in 2019.

www.gaysemiotics.com

Daniel Nicoletta

Daniel Nicoletta is a freelance photographer who began his career in 1975 as an intern to Crawford Barton, who was then the staff photographer for Advocate Magazine. Nicoletta also worked in Harvey Milk’s camera store in the heart Castro district and he was involved in Milk’s victorious election as one of the first openly gay elected officials in the world.

Nicoletta’s body of work maps his long romance with San Francisco and its people, especially the lesbian, gay bisexual, and transgender communities.

https://www.dannynicoletta.com/

Dwayne Newton

I’m a San Francisco-based photographer and for me, it’s all about people; the who, what, when, where, and why. Photography is all about “being there,” and “being there” has allowed me to witness as a photojournalist the world through a viewfinder, documenting in all conditions and seasons the full spectrum of the human condition in 30 countries.

www.dwaynenewton.com

Preston Gannaway

Preston Gannaway is a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer and artist. Her work often tells intimate stories about American families and marginalized communities while addressing themes like gender identity, class, and our relationship to place. Gannaway is best known for long-term projects like Remember Me, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Editorial clients include The New York Times Magazine, California Sunday Magazine, and ESPN. Her first book, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, was released in 2014. Her photographs are held both publicly and privately and have been exhibited widely. She is based in Sonoma County, California.

www.prestongannaway.com

JEB (Joan E. Biren)

JEB (Joan E. Biren), an internationally recognized documentary artist, began chronicling the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in 1971. She is the author of two groundbreaking books of photography Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians  (1979) and Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front (1987). JEB’s videos, including For Love and For Life: The 1987 March on Washington For Lesbian and Gay Rights and A Simple Matter of Justice: The 1993 March on Washington, are distributed by Frameline. JEB’s work, Being Seen Makes A Movement Possible, is currently installed on the façade of the Leslie-Lohman Museum in NYC. 

The JEB (Joan E. Biren) papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Collection. You can find out more here:  https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/pwv/pwv-jeb.html and here: https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/resources/915 

JEB (Joan E. Biren) on Instagram: @jebmedia

Richard Renaldi

Manhattan Sunday is part homage to a slice of New York nightlife, and part celebration of New York as palimpsest—an evolving form onto which millions of people have and continue to project their ideal selves and ideal lives. Reflecting on my experience as a young man in the late 1980s and having embraced my gay identity, I found a home in the mystery and abandonment of the club, the nightscape, and then finally daybreak. each offering a transformation of Manhattan from the known world into a dreamscape of characters acting out their fantasies on a grand stage. Drawing heavily on personal subcultural pathways, I sought to capture that ethereal moment when Saturday night bleeds into Sunday morning across the borough of Manhattan. This collection of portraits, landscapes, and club interiors evokes the vibrant nighttime rhythms of a city that persists in both its decadence and its dreams, despite beliefs to the contrary.  

renaldi.com

Manhattan Sunday Book: 
https://aperture.org/shop/manhattan-sunday 
 
Representation:  
https://benrubigallery.com/artist/42/richard-renaldi 
 
Instagram: 
@renaldiphotos 

Rink Foto

The lesbian executive director of an arts organization told Rink Foto that he is a gay activist masquerading as a journalist. He is mostly self-assigned and covers 10-15 events a week, which are mostly LGBT centered, and over 500 events a year in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dozens of non-profit executive directors tell him that they depend on him to photograph their events.. His work involves the diversity of The City at Asian, African American, Latino, Native American, Transgender, and other groups’ community happenings since 1969. The Rink Foto Archive includes more than a half-million images.

Rink Foto is asked to consult about organizations’ media outreach strategy and event coordination because of his long time experience, and he has involved himself in what San Francisco Chronicle writer Randy Shilts called advocacy journalism.
He organized a photographers group that seized power with mostly women activists in a coup at the 1980 Gay Parade Committee for 3 years and changed its name to the Lesbian/Gay Parade Committee.

Rink Foto’s articles that were published in the San Francisco Bay Times can be seen at http://rinkfoto.blogspot.com, that
includes his witnessing an historic Black Panther Party/ Gay Liberation Front unity meeting in the early 1970’s. Rink Foto’s photographs are published in the San Francisco Bay Times (sfbaytimes.com) and in over 50 books and appear in over 2 dozen films. He has been honored by mayors, state legislators, city supervisors, and no-profit organizations.
Rink Foto is the most published bay area professional photographer, said a San Francisco Chronicle editor. An archivist said that he is the only person who was at every SF Pride event, since 1970. And he took photographs.

Rick Gerharter

Rick Gerharter is a San Francisco based photojournalist who has documented the queer communities of San Francisco and beyond for nearly 35 years. He is regularly published in the Bay Area Reporter of San Francisco and in a wide variety of periodicals, newspapers, books, films and exhibitions. He is a contributor to Getty Images. His work is in the collection of the Hormel Center at the San Francisco Public Library and the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. 
 
The photographs are a selection from the 36 Pride parades I have photographed since 1982, missing only 1984 and 1993. 

José Alberto Guzmán Colón

I love working with well-known individuals – whether they be reality television, drag stars, famous club personalities or trans-culture-based artists – and deconstructing society’s views of those persons through photography. By taking subjects out of their comfort zones, challenging how others or even how they see themselves, the result is a reimagining of a public persona and a transformation of the traditional portrait. 

I am currently working on my new Photography table book which will feature 10 years of my favorite drag super stars from around the country. 

I could not be doing this amazing work without the support of all who have been donating towards my Gofundme campaign. 

www.gofundme.com/f/jagc-photography-tour 

My wish is to inspire and be inspired in the art of creative image making after all it’s all about the bigger picture.  

 -José Alberto Guzmán Colón 

Sean Black

The right for every individual to freely explore and express personal tastes and tendencies related to identification remains a constant battle. During this stressful period of COVID19, I have revisited my ongoing project Secretly Pretty which delves into the many faces and facets of my alternate persona, Violet Lillian. Drawing inspiration from self-portrait master Cindy Sherman and imbuing cinematic direction from touchstones of early childhood experience such as Creature Feature, Love Boat and Tigerbeat, I aim to stylistically unmask the rich details of a broader spectrum of being human.  
 
 
Website www.seanblackphoto.com 
Instagram: @seanblackofficial  

Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover

Based in Alameda in the San Francisco Bay Area, Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover have worked together as a team for over 30 years on documentary photo-essay projects and as editorial and commercial photographers for a variety of clients such as Stanford University, Goodwill Industries, TechWomen, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The documentary projects they’ve completed include ‘PRIDE – Heart of a Movement: The San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Freedom Day Parade: 1984-1990,’ ‘House of Angels: Living With AIDS at the Bailey-Boushay House: 1992-1995,’ ‘American Portraits: Hopes & Dreams,’ and ‘Portrait of the AIDS Generation.’  

www.saul-sandraphoto.com

Skot Jonz

Longtime SF resident and HMPC member departed the Bay Area in late 2019. My entry in ART + PRIDE 2020 explores how my photography has evolved while adapting to major vision loss in a completely new environment. I find myself intrigued by the juxtaposition of humanmade objects and our fleeting existence against the enduring presence of Mother Earth. Evolution vs Extinction emphasizes the necessity of adapting ways of being, challenging our thoughts and beliefs — imperative for individual growth and the survival of humanity.

Website: http://www.skotjonz.com
IG: @skotshotz

Larry Perperl

I make black-and-white, silver-gelatin prints from analog (film) negatives. I find in this medium an opportunity to re-imagine the present through images that implicitly honor the past. I took this photograph in 2019 as the team completed the construction of the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks, an annual commemoration during San Francisco’s Pride weekend for the past 25 years.  In the words of the organizers, “there is an ongoing need to still bring the message of the Pink Triangle to the world, the message being what can happen when hatred and bigotry become law.”

Website: https://www.lensculture.com/laurence-peiperl
IG: brightfog
Flickr: bright.fog

Fred Goldsmith

My common ground is character, whether of people or places and scenes. I see reality toying with artifice, especially viewed through the lens of a camera. I think photos are also a mirror in which you and I are reflected. It’s an honor and delight to be asked to exhibit and to share with all of you who come to look. In these days of “distancing,” the chance to connect through photos which offer glances and glimpses, and more is a welcome opportunity. I hope you enjoy yourself while here. 

Trix Rosen

Trix Rosen’s work can be found in many collections, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Museum. In 2017, she was invited by MoMA New York to submit her original slide show “MAITRESSE,” along with two photographs for the accompanying catalog, to the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, “CLUB 57: Film, Performance and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983.”  In 2015 she exhibited photographs from her  HE-SHE  Portfolio for the 5th THESSALONIKI BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, Main Program, “IDENT-ALTER-ITY, BUT STILL IN ONE PIECE” exhibition in Greece. 
 
Her photographs have been represented in over 50 exhibitions in galleries and in museums including the Ceres Gallery and Hebrew Union College Museum in New York City; the Sherwin Miller Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Reece Museum in Johnson City, Tennessee; New Jersey’s George Segal Gallery in Montclair and Pierro Gallery in South Orange; and the Kepco Gallery Museum in Seoul, South Korea 

https://trixrosen.com/ 
 
https://www.blurb.com/books/7347934-he-she

Max Koo

Rebel artist Max Koo has long sought God’s favor. He tried appeasement, with new interpretations of renaissance master works incorporating the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Yet he continues, hoping that accumulating evidence of his adoration will eventually compensate for past sins.

Bob Adler

Since I was a child, I have been fascinated by outlaws and villains. They knew the path of conformity and acceptance but chose to lead their lives down an alternative road, breaking with society’s norms and expectations. As a photographer I am drawn to these same people, especially the women who find themselves working in the adult “Underground” professions. I try to capture in the moment of my photographs their complex inner character with honesty as they pose for me in their provocative costumes and dangerous surroundings. 

J.B. Higgins

I’ve been photographing in the San Francisco Gay Community for the last three and a half decades.  While my focus was on how to make ends meet through portraits, headshots, events, and art, the end result turned out to be a kind of documentary of the gay community I live in. I ran into The San Francisco Twins (Vivian and Marion Brown) on the streets of our fair city a few years back. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to photograph John Waters and Divine for the premiere of Polyester in 1981. (I only had 20 minutes alone with John Waters to create the photographs you see here.) 

Street photography has always been a strong passion mine. I include here some ‘portraits from the streets’.

Instagram:  jbhigginsphoto2018

Peter Thoshinsky

Peter Thoshinsky is a 61 year old San Francisco native who began photography at the age of 17. Primarily self taught Peter’s focus in photography has always been on the “Human Experience”. Peter’s work includes documentary historical photography for the City of San Francisco, domestic and international wire service news with a focus on LGBT issues.
 
More of Peter’s work can be seen at www.tmaxphoto.com

Ben Illili

I’m a portrait and event photographer based in the Central Valley California. I was born and raised in San Francisco. I was exposed to Ansel Adams and early life magazine. I found my fit in black and white. I enjoy documenting life and try to always have a camera by my side. 

Jim James

My photography started as a way to break through shyness and feel connected. It soon became a front-row ticket to the gay subcultures in San Francisco and around the world.

I’ve amassed five decades of analog and digital photography of gay San Franciscana, parades, festivals, art happenings, nightlife, exotic travel, and male erotica.

Using only the smallest, minimalist, equipment, I have a quick, gentle shooting style and a good eye for documenting people and things at their best.

I learned and perfected my skills at the Harvey Milk Photography Center, the San Francisco Art Institute, and on the streets of San Francisco.


Website: photojimsf.com
Instagram: @photojimsf 

Jim Watkins

I’ve been chasing the light for close to 30 years now, since I started photographing scenic images of Europe and Asia Minor throughout the 1990s. The chase continued to flourish among the flat plains and rolling hills that represented the Midwestern landscapes of my roots. Now living in the San Francisco Bay area, the lure of the natural landscape continues to draw me. I’m chasing a different light here: light reflecting off mountains, filtering through the leaves of coastal redwoods, or permeating a thin layer of ocean mist. 

Judi Iranyi

I have been photographing for almost 50 years.
I am an avid gardener and spend a lot of time working in my garden. Since sheltering in place 
I have started to focus on photographing my garden, this is a new phase for me, as most of my past work was portraiture and travel photography.
I am lucky to have a garden to spend time in and photograph my plants during these uncertain times.
I have chosen to print in black and white except for a series of Oriental poppies.
By using black and white I feel that adds a dramatic mood to the images.

www.judiiranyi.com

Facebook.com/cacique1125

Michael Johnstone

Photography collaboration with his partner David Faulk

Mrs.Vera is a character composed of discarded and unlikely materials, Mrs. Vera engages the viewer with ideas of non-conformity, isolation and celebration.
By transforming these unwanted items into something unexpected, she enters society through her interaction with her surroundings and the general public.

At times shamanistic all those drawn to it are welcome to become part of a tribal experience, as when we assemble for gay Pride celebrations and street fairs etc.

Michael Johnstone Dactyls & VeraSpheres

Motion graphics based on detail photos of our Verasphere costumes
In Greek mythology, the Dactyls were the archaic mythical race of male beings associated with the Great Mother, whether as Cybele or Rhea.
The Dactyls were both ancient smiths and healing magicians. In some myths, they are in Hephaestus’ employ, and they taught metalworking, mathematics, and the alphabet to humans. Their numbers vary, but often they were ten spirit-men so that they were often interchangeable.

LINK TO THE VIDEO PAGE
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7120929

Lewis Walden

My name is Lewis Walden. I have lived in San Francisco for over 35 years.

I produced this image by first taking a selfie with my digital camera. Processed the image in Photoshop by adding grain and separating the colors. I tweaked the image in an iPhone app called XnShape for the desired result.

Lois Bielefeld

House, Hold is a new body of work collaborating with my wife, Jackie, during shelter-in-place. Together we make a new photograph every day for the month of May looking at how we negotiate home, our roles, and power in this time. Since 2018 I’ve been collaborating with others on a series New Domesticity where I’ve been making photographs of what home looks like the current day. Since I’m unable to continue that work I decided to turn the camera inward on my own home and to examine all that is quirky, vulnerable, and beautiful within our relationship and domestic space. 

http://www.loisbielefeld.com 
Instagram: @loisbielefeld 

Sandy Graham

Sandy Graham  Artist/Photographer/ American/New York

I documented many Community Events in San Francisco in the mid to late 70’s. A favorite was the Pride Parades. These photos are all from that time in our history.

http://www.margritwenzel.com/

Kevin Kelleher and Emily Trinh

50×50: A Celebration of Pride in Commemoration of Stonewall

Pride Sunday, 2019

I had been going to Pride for nearly a decade while last year was Emily’s first. It was special. To see her experience it–the glittery bright spectacle and fully charged razzle-dazzle charm–was like seeing the festive, joyous celebration for the first time all over again. It’s better than Christmas, Passover, Festivus or whatever traditional holiday. Being free to be who you are and to love who you want to love is a more powerful tradition worth celebrating. To see a once marginalized community, allies, and government officials march down Market Street and gallivant around the closed streets of Civic Center is incredible. We thought of the generations before who put their foot down in the fight for the same individual rights America was founded upon–life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We thought of the demonstrations of fed-up,had-enough-of-it revolutionaries who fought back, made a scene, and de-​manded ​equal treatment at the accepting, come-as-you-are Stonewall Inn–a rare haven in 1969. Fifty years later, the memory of that milestone loomed in the back of our minds and we thought kept thinking about Hank Trout.

Seeing Mr. Trout and listening to him speak just the week before at The Photo Center’s AnnualPride Exhibit moved us beyond words. Standing there in Civic Center under the bright sunny June skies, we reflected on his connection to everyone who showed up on that Pride Sunday. His tenacious commitment for equality paved the way for these diverse new generations to celebrate openly, freely, and without shame for being themselves and loving who they want to love.

And so, Mr. Trout–this series is dedicated to you. It was made from our shared love for the medium of photography and to thank you and your maverick generation for standing up and raising hell in the name of civil rights. Out of our respect and admiration for you and to commemorate Stonewall, we set out to shoot 50 portraits representing the diversity of people who showed up. People out on the streets of San Francisco to celebrate the last Sunday of June–a day that your early stage work in the liberation movement made possible and continues to. Your brave, rebellious, kind soul is extraordinary and your activist spirit for equality is the embodiment of a meaningful life well lived and that continues to thrive. You stood up for yourself when a majority tried to silence your voice and told the future generations to love themselves and speak louder and command equal rights. Clearly, your vision worked. Again, thank you for your moving words and essay last year and we are honored to be a part of this 2020 exhibition and share our work ​50×50 ​in your name. Thanks and congrats to Director Dave Christensen for carrying through with another annual Pride exhibit especially during these difficult times.

Kevin Kelleher with Emily Trinh
May 12, 2020
San Francisco

Thomas Galli-Magerl

The term “Neue Normalität” is used by the Austrian government to describe the more restrictive and changed reality we are facing in the fight against the Covid19 pandemic. My project is exploring and questioning this „normality”, or the loss of it. At the same time it is an attempt to create a space for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate Pride despite having no CSD parades this year. Everyone can sign up for having a portrait taken, with proper safety distance. To put further emphasis on the “oddness” of our current situation I’m using photographic techniques such as x-processing and colourizing black and white photos.  

Christopher Robledo

Chris Robledo is a San Francisco Latinx street photographer splitting his time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. His work has been published in the Castro Courier, Hoodline, the Castro Art Walk of San Francisco and in the “We Are Public Schools 2020″ billboard campaign for United Teachers of Los Angeles. He’s exhibited work at 1090 Gallery, The Harvey Milk Photo Center and California Senator Scott Wiener’s office at the State of California building in San Francisco.

IG: @_chrisrobledo

Michael Kerner

Walking through the Castro and seeing sign after sign of places closed was just overwhelming, so I followed my partner’s suggestion and went back and took pictures of each of them. Putting them all together is the only way to make sense of just how many places are shut down due to the COVID 19 Shelter in Place order by the City and County of San Francisco issued March 16, 2020.  
 
Michael Kerner is a local photographer and artist. His work has been used on 3 covers of a national magazine and featured in the BAR and the Bay Times.  

https://kernercreative.com

Kevin Zhou

With the uniqueness of a Holga plastic camera, you can stack multiple exposures in one frame, bringing an illusion effect of subjects moving through time. Walking around a few neighborhoods in San Francisco, I wanted to capture these people and places. In these photos, there are many parts to focus on. All these subjects were moving at the same time and telling their own stories. Kevin Zhou is a native San Franciscan who recently received his degrees in Photography and LGBT Studies at CCSF. He has presented work in local galleries and also assisted in photoshoots for a national magazine. 

https://www.kevinzphoto.com/

Jessica Tanzer

Jessica Tanzer studied painting and photography at SFAI. Tanzer photographed her fellow San Francisco social justice warriors of ACT UP and Queer Nation during the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s including characters energizing The City’s rich counter-culture of the time. Her work addressed safe sex, increased homophobia and art censorship. Tanzer regularly shot for On Our Backs Magazine. The anonymous group Boy With Arms Akimbo often appropriated her work for guerilla style art tactics in response to Jesse Helms’ banning of AIDS and arts funding. Tanzer’s catalog, negatives and papers are housed at Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection.

Instagram @Jessica_Tanzer