The gay essay è uno dei ritratti più forti e autentici della vita dei gay negli Stati Uniti tra gli anni sessanta e settanta. Il suo autore, Anthony Friedkin, comincia a lavorarci a soli diciannove anni, sperando di far conoscere meglio una realtà che fino a quel momento i mezzi d’informazione hanno raccontato scegliendo un punto di vista torbido e pruriginoso.
Nato nel 1949 a Hollywood, figlio di una ballerina e uno sceneggiatore, cresce in una casa frequentata da persone che lavorano nel mondo dello spettacolo, tra cui molte apertamente gay e che considerano quell’ambiente una specie di rifugio. Fuori di lì, sanno di non poter essere se stesse. È il 1969 quando Friedkin comincia il suo progetto: l’anno di Stonewall, le rivolte scoppiate dopo una retata della polizia in un locale gay di New York, lo Stonewall Inn. Ma la violenza e l’ostilità dei poliziotti e dei cittadini contro la comunità gay sono diffuse in tutto il paese.
L’obiettivo del fotografo è andare oltre gli stereotipi e dare la giusta dignità alla rappresentazione dei gay, come individui prima di tutto. Intervistato da Time, racconta: “Ero determinato a creare un insieme di immagini che ridessero onore e rispetto ai gay. Volevo celebrare chi viveva liberamente la propria sessualità, nonostante il pericolo”.
The gay essay ha impiegato molti anni a vedere la luce. Al termine del progetto, nel 1972, Friedkin lo propone a diverse riviste ma tutte rifiutano perché temono di perdere gli inserzionisti. La prima mostra completa arriva solo nel 2014 grazie al museo De Young di San Francisco, seguita da un libro. In questi giorni, le foto sono esposte alla galleria Daniel Cooney fine art di New York, fino al 4 marzo. (Internazionale)

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Anthony Friedkin (born 1949) is an American photographer whose works have chronicled California’s landscapes, cities and people. His topics include phenomena such as surf culture, prisons, cinema, and gay culture. Friedkin’s photographs have been exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art[3] and the J. Paul Getty Museum. His photographs are included in major Museum collections: New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum and others. He is represented in numerous private collections as well. His pictures have been published in Japan, Russia, Europe, and many Fine Art magazines in America.
In 2014, The Gay Essay, which documents Californian gay culture during the late 1960s and early 1970s, was featured in San Francisco’s deYoung Museum.
He has over forty years experience as a professional photographer. Anthony Friedkin has lived and worked out of his apartment studio in Santa Monica.
In 1969, when Friedkin was 19, he began to chronicle gay life in Los Angeles and San Francisco, hoping to increase its visibility and gain a better understanding of gay culture there. The photo essay was captured in the years of sexual revolution, around the time of the Stonewall riots.While taking the portraits in informal settings such as hotels and bars, he often developed close relationships with his subjects.[16] In 2014, Friedkin released The Gay Essay, a book containing 75 portraits from the series, published by Yale University Press. The publisher announced that the book is intended to be the first of several books containing photos from the series.
Friedkin began his work on the “Gay Essay,” when he was only nineteen years of age, and set out “to depict [the] struggles, humiliations, and [the] triumphs [of queer culture]”. Friedkin’s goal was to document what it meant to defy the grain when it is wrong, that is to show the courage it takes to define one’s own freedom and individuality.
“The Gay Essay” was not shown in America for a long time due to the sensitivity of the images Friedkin produced and a less than receptive society whose mainstream was overwhelmingly homophobic, simply put, but was exhibited in Europe and East Asia and was received well.
From June 2014 to January 2015, San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum exhibited the 75 prints to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The exhibit also included materials from the artist’s archive that convey the historical context of the work.
(Wikipedia)