Queer History at the Getty

Stanton & DeLong, Saturday Night Bath, about 1905. Getty Museum

The Getty Center's marquee summer exhibition appears to be the first of its kind and scope. "Queer Lens: A History of Photography" is an ambitious loan exhibition of 270 camera images of homosexuality and gender nonconformity. You might think that there's not that much material prior to Stonewall (1969). But the selection on view spans the pre-photographic (a c. 1810s silhouette) and post-photographic (a 2024 generative AI image). The pictures encompass male-gaze lesbian erotica; vernacular photos; portraits of gay celebrities, closeted and out; drag through the ages; the physique magazine school; documentary images of LGBTQ+ activism; identity politics-inflected contemporary art. A show like this is both social history and art history. If you don't know what a Boston marriage is or what the Pansy crazy was, you'll find out. The display melds first-rate images by famous artists and canon-expanding works by anonymous creators.

Installation view, "Queer Lens: A History of Photography"

Unknown, Double Silhouette of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant of Weybridge, Vermont, 1810-20. Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History

The earliest work in "Queer Lens" was not made with a lens. It's a silhouette honoring the early 19th-century same-sex marriage of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant, who lived together, ran a successful tailoring business, and were active in their church. The citizens of Weybridge, Vermont, accepted their 44-year union, and the estimable ladies now rest under the same tombstone. The silhouette came to attention in a 2018 show at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, something hardly conceivable these days. 

Unknown (French), Two Women Embracing, about 1848. Getty Museum

What makes a picture gay? This French daguerreotype, probably made within the medium's first decade, records two women but must have been made for straight men. 

Gillman & Co., Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, 1893. National Portrait Gallery, London

Sarah Choate Sears, John Singer Sargent Drawing Ethel Barrymore, 1903. Getty Museum

John Singer Sargent wasn't known as gay when Sarah Choate Sears created his portrait. Lately he's a gay icon (we think, though it's unprovable). There is then a Schrödinger's cat element to some of "Queer Lens." Take the 1905 photo at top of post, of two men sharing a Saturday night bath. It's gay AF, right? Yet filling a bathtub with hot water was a big chore in 1905, and it might have made sense for two friends to share a bath. On the other hand, photography was a lot more laborious back then too. The men evidently thought it was worth commissioning a photographer to document their bath. 

Société Industrielle de Photographie, Charles Gregory and Jack Brown dancing the Cake-Walk in Paris, 1903. Wellcome Collection, London

The Cake-Walk was a Black dance mocking plantation owners in the antebellum South. It became popular in Paris around the turn of the 20th century, with Black American dancers playing drag and straight roles. This postcard connects American slavery to the roots of Harlem ballroom culture.

Man Ray, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, 1922. Getty Museum

Claude Cahun, I.O.U. (Self-Pride), 1929-30. LACMA

Gender nonconformity was an element of Dada and Surrealism. On view is Man Ray and Duchamp's Rrose Sélavy (1923) and Claude Cahun's I.O.U. (Self-Pride) (1929-30).

Weegee, Liberace

Was Weegee a gay ally or exploiter? Does the question even mean anything in the noir, noir world of Weegee? "Queer Lens" includes Weegee's famous The Gay Deceiver, a much-reprinted c. 1939 shot of a cross-dresser vamping it up in a paddy wagon. Then there's Weegee's funhouse mirror portrait of Liberace, a flamboyant early TV star who embodied a gay persona before the mainstream media addressed such things. Weegee's "distortions" are judged inferior to the cynical crime scenes. But Liberace seems a perfect and horrifying vision of celebrity. 

Richard Avedon, Andy Warhol and Members of the Factory, New York City, 10/30/69. Getty Museum

Another take on celebrity is Richard Avedon's panorama of the Warhol factory, created the year after Warhol's attempted assassination. 

Pierre et Gilles, Neptune (Karim Boualam), 1988. Getty Museum

A decade after Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, Pierre et Giles' staged homoerotic tableaux were quite the gay thing. Maybe they're due for reconsideration. The Getty bought Neptune (Karim Boualam) in 2024.

Installation view

One room, titled "Friends of Dorothy," is a portrait gallery of gay and lesbian notables. The wall above has images of Marlene Dietrich, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Francis Bacon, Langston Hughes, Johnny Mathis, etc., etc.  The pale baby at left center, a famous Diane Arbus image, is a very young Anderson Cooper.

The expression "friends of Dorothy" (meaning gays) is usually connected to The Wizard of Oz. The gallery text offers an alternate theory. Algonquin Round Table wit Dorothy Parker frequented West Hollywood's Garden of Allah hotel. The owners feared it was becoming a gay hangout and began banning some customers. Parker's friends identified themselves as "friends of Dorothy" to get in. True or not, Parker described her (male) husband as "queer as a billy goat." She is remembered for the zinger: "Heterosexuality isn't normal. It's just common."

Catherine Opie, Angela Scheirl [now A. Hans Scheirl], 1993. Museum of Modern Art

Matías Sauter Morera, Cristian en el "Amor de Calle," 2023 (image) and 2024 (print). Getty Museum

Matías Sauter Morera's picture has gotten advance buzz as the Getty's first acquisition of an AI-generated work. Morera explores the world of the pegamachos, Costa Rican cowboys who had sex with men on the DL. As pegamachos would not allow their pictures to be taken, Morera used AI to hallucinate a photoreal version of the culture. Getty photography curator Paul Martineau told ARTnews that he considers the image to be a photograph rather than AI. (Discuss.)

"Queer Lens" is at the Getty Center through Sep. 28, 2025, accompanied by an archival show at the Getty Research Institute, "$3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives."