"Lovers"
Arthur Tress
San Francisco, 1964
This image was revolutionary at the time; gay men were sexual outlaws. This image was powerful and one of the many reasons I moved to San Francisco. Young men in small towns did not expect to live freely and find a same-sex partner. It was unthinkable.
The gay rights some people take for granted today didn't exist when I grew up in the 60s and 70s. It took until my mid-twenties to shake off my religious coat of shame. Equality came in fits and starts, and it took a lot of hard work, and blood, sweat, tears of gay men and lesbians. So the audacity of queers telling us that, if it weren't for "trans women color, gay white men," is ludicrous
All I wanted was everything every American enjoyed, and that's to live my life freely without fear of losing our employment or housing, because we, men, loved and had sex with other men. And now that those barriers are no longer there, I'm living a life I created. And I'm neither oppressed nor the oppressor.
“Photography is my method for defining the confusing world that rushes constantly toward me.”
Arthur Tress is a gay American photographer renowned for a diverse body of work that encompasses surrealism and homoerotic fantasy. He was one of the first artists of the 1970s to move away from documentary street photography and create staged, dreamlike images.