50 Years of Pride

Curated by Lenore Chinn and Pamela Peniston

 
 

About the Exhibition

A collaborative exhibition conceived by the GLBT Historical Society and the SFAC Galleries at San Francisco City Hall, “50 Years of Pride” displays nearly 100 photographs to celebrate five decades of San Francisco Pride, the city’s most beloved public festival.

Gabrielle Daniels and Merle Woo carrying a sign reading “People of Color, Feminists, Jews, Gays, Fight Back,” 1980; photograph by JEB (Joan E. Biren) ©2020, used with permission, all rights reserved.

Gabrielle Daniels and Merle Woo carrying a sign reading “People of Color, Feminists, Jews, Gays, Fight Back,” 1980; photograph by JEB (Joan E. Biren) ©2020, used with permission, all rights reserved.

On June 27, 1970, a small group of LGBTQ people marched down Polk Street—then San Francisco’s most prominent queer neighborhood—to mark an event called “Christopher Street Liberation Day.” Commemorating the one-year anniversary of the historic Stonewall uprising on Christopher Street in New York City, the march was followed the next afternoon by an intimate “gay-in” at Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park. Fifty years later, this modest gathering has evolved into San Francisco Pride, a globally famous annual parade and celebration that welcomes hundreds of thousands of participants and spectators from around the world the last weekend in June.

Encompassing examples of photojournalism, portraiture, fine-art photography, posters and magazine covers,50 Years of Pride” honors how San Francisco’s LGBTQ community has come into its own since that first humble Pride gathering. The exhibition explores how Pride has reflected and refracted the community’s priorities, responses and activism in times of hope and despair, triumph and setback. Images drawn from the GLBT Historical Society’s archives are joined by photographs held by other institutions, as well as works by over a dozen independent queer photographers.

The exhibition is curated by Lenore Chinn and Pamela Peniston, two San Francisco artists with deep roots in the city’s queer arts and culture milieu. “Culling through the archives at the GLBT Historical Society, we found a treasure trove of photographs, snapshots and 35 mm color slides that began to tell a story of the spirit and nature of Pride and what it has come to mean both locally and internationally,” Chinn says.

Thematically, the photographs document the impact of political events and social movements on Pride. They also illustrate the transformation and diversification of the event over the years into a celebration event that represents the full spectrum of gender, race, ethnicity, class, gender identity and expression, sexuality and ability. “Our outreach to photographers and their archives amplified our discoveries,” Chinn notes. “With the rise of gay power and an expanding movement, we saw more participation and more diversity along gender and ethnic lines.”

About the Curators


Lenore Chinn is a painter, photographer and cultural activist who works to create structures of personal and institutional support that both sustain critical artistic production and advance movements for social justice. Portraiture, both in painting and photography, is at the core of her visual art practice. Her current street photography chronicles a rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape. A San Francisco native, she was a founding member of Lesbians in the Visual Arts, a co-founder of the Queer Cultural Center and has been active in the Asian American Women Artists Association since the group was founded.

Pamela Peniston is a founding member and artistic director of the Queer Cultural Center, and has been one of the curators for the visual and performing arts at the National Queer Arts Festival since its inception. She has won numerous awards for her work designing and painting sets for national and Bay Area theatrical and dance companies. Peniston’s photographic interests are split among the wonder and beauty of nature, women in windows, the beauty of simple architectural elements and the community and humanity of people around the world.

List of Independent Photographers


The following LGBTQ independent photographers are featured in the exhibition:

Chloe Atkins, Saul Bromberger & Sandra Hoover Photography, Cathy Cade, Adam Chin, Lenore Chinn, Jane Philomen Cleland, Greg Day, Rick Gerharter, Happy/L.A. Hyder, Mason J., Jim James, JEB (Joan E. Biren), Michael Johnstone, H. Lenn Keller, Tom Levy, James McNamara, Daniel Nicoletta and Adele Prandini.

About the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries


Located in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center, the SFAC Galleries makes contemporary art accessible to broad audiences through curated exhibitions that both reflect our regional diversity and position Bay Area visual art production within an international contemporary art landscape. By commissioning new works, collaborating with arts and community organizations and supporting artist’s projects, the SFAC Galleries provides new and challenging opportunities for contemporary art to engage with a civic dialogue. The SFAC Galleries was founded in 1970 and is the exhibitions program of the San Francisco Arts Commission, the arts agency of the City and County of San Francisco.

About San Francisco Pride


This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of San Francisco Pride. The mission of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Celebration is to educate the world, commemorate our heritage, celebrate our culture and liberate our people. Our annual event on the last weekend of June is the biggest gathering of the LGBTQ community and allies in America as well as San Francisco’s largest outdoor event, consisting of a two-day Celebration in Civic Center plus a parade down Market Street with more than 280 contingents marching. Since 1997, SF Pride has awarded over $2.5 million in proceeds to local nonprofit LGBTQ organizations and those organizations working on issues related to HIV/AIDS, cancer, homelessness and animal welfare.

Acknowledgements


Additional support for “50 Years of Pride” is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and San Francisco Grants for the Arts.

 

 
 

Complementary Exhibition

A complementary online exhibition about San Francisco Pride, “Labor of Love: The Birth of San Francisco Pride, 1970-1980,” showcases how San Francisco in the 1970s forged the internationally renowned annual celebration that would come to be known as the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Parade. “Labor of Love: The Birth of San Francisco Pride, 1970-1980” is available on the GLBT Historical Society’s website at glbthistory.org/labor-of-love.


Banner photo: The view of the celebrations from the top of the San Francisco City Hall dome, 2008; photograph by Rick Gerharter, used with permission, all rights reserved.