This summer will see the publication of a new photographic book which records LGBT+ life in San Francisco during a seminal period in the development of the LGBT+ movement.
LGBT: San Francisco is the first book dedicated to photographer Daniel Nicoletta’s archive of powerful images tracing the burgeoning lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) mecca that was San Francisco in the 1970s to the present day.
Nicoletta is well-known for his iconic images of Harvey Milk, one of the world’s first openly gay elected officials who was assassinated by a homophobic colleague in 1978, but his photographs are also a unique insider’s perspective on the years that followed Milk’s death, taking us through the ebullience and the pathos of the times.
The book features a foreword by film director Gus Van Sant, who directed the Oscar nominated bio-pic, Milk, and has an introduction by Chuck Mobley.
In his foreward, Van Sant writes: “Danny’s photos are a treasured artistic record of the people who initiated a movement from within their own neighbourhood, and this work links that exuberant time to the larger history of LGBT people. This book is a very welcome addition to our enduring collective memory.”
From the outrageous and flamboyant to the political and poignant, Nicoletta’s images capture the excitement of the alternative theatre scene, the dazzling drag queens and kings, the rise of AIDS activism, and the unfailing bravery of the marriage quality movement.
Chuck Mobley writes in his introduction: “Perhaps it is helpful to remember that the majority of the people depicted in Nicoletta’s photographs – especially in the years prior to the digital deluge – did not necessarily grow up surrounded by the kind of imagery found in this book. Everything that they were experiencing – the politics, the love, the parties, their activism, their artistic endeavours, and the community they were creating – was entirely new. They were making it up as they went along; they weren’t simply mimicking what they had grown up seeing in films and photographs. All the while, Nicoletta was there alongside them, quietly building a sustained practice out of what was essentially a collective enterprise: the life and times around him.”
LGBT: San Francisco will be available from the end of June 2017.
It’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon and you can follow on Facebook, here:
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