Monday 27 June 2011

A Sense of Family Past
 

Art Mariano ('The Meaning of Art') put a powerful and moving video my way yesterday - '"Secretly" - A Vintage Montage Of Guys Together' (LINK).

As the title suggests, it's a compilation of photographs of gay couples from I guess the Edwardian period up to the end of World War Two - an era when we were much less visible and 'kissing secretly'.

Set to the song 'Secretly', I had the strongest feeling of family past - gays from a broad range of ages and social classes in their (mostly) just being themselves in their everyday lives.

I felt as though I was flicking through an album of small-scale gay social/domestic history - a real pleasure as there is so little of this readily available. The images range from often staid-ish studio portraits to casual snap shots where the subjects and their interactions almost jump out of the photographs.

In no particular order and given that not absolutely all of those in the archive are our brothers ...

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I had a great feeling of brotherhood browsing over this family album of our ancestors - I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Did you end up having any favourites?