The saying goes a picture speaks a thousand words, and this couldn’t be more evident than when it comes to the gay rights struggle. Long before the days of social media, photography was used as a powerful tool to document, tackle and inspire the issues that have shaped and defined our world.
In the early 20th century artists such as Wilhelm von Gloeden and Berenice Abbott began to use photography as a tool to project messages on sexuality. The media and public soon followed and photography became a form of propaganda in the fight for sexual equality.
Causing controversy, making a stance, redefining sexuality and depicting the progression of the gay rights movement, these photographs define the journey over the past 70 years.
1965: Protesters picketing in front of the White House over federal employment restrictions.
1969: The Stonewall riots marked the tipping point in the gay rights movement; patrons of New York’s Stonewall Inn said enough was enough.
1969: The Gay Liberation Front marches on Times Square, New York City.
1970: Demonstrators Tom Doerr and Marty Robinson during the Gay Activists Alliance sit-in at New York State Republican headquarters in NYC.
1970: Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day parade demonstrator Donna Gottschalk holds a poster saying ‘I am your worst fear I am your best fantasy’.
1971: Protesters march on Albany in New York, stating ‘Gay is Good’.
1973: Demonstration at New York City Hall in support of gay rights bill “Intro 475”.
1977: Activists parade up Sixth Avenue in a Lesbian Feminist Liberation march to guarantee homosexuals their civil rights, New York City.
1987: Washington D.C, police arrest a demonstrator attempting to block the entrance to the Supreme Court.
1993: More than 1 million people march in Washington D.C for Lesbian, Gay and Bi equal rights and liberation.
1994: Activists carried a mile-long rainbow banner to Central Park as part of a “continuous path of freedom, marking the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots.
2001: Two men marrying in Amsterdam, in the first month after the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.
2004: Massachusetts legalizes gay marriage and becomes the first state to give same-sex coupes the right to marry.
2012: President Barack Obama says he now personally endorses same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC News.
2015: U.S. Supreme Court rules that same-sex couples have the right to marry in all 50 states.
2016: Prince William appears on the front cover of gay magazine, Attitude, stating that no one should be bullied because of their sexuality.
2017: Same-sex marriage is now permitted in Bermuda after a gay couple, Winston Godwin and Greg DeRoche, won their legal challenge to tie the knot.
