Village Voice Fred McDarrah Immortalized Decades of Gay History in NYC

Liberation Day, was held on June 28, 1970, the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising.Fred W. McDarrah / MUUS Collection

 New York City's first gay pride march, then called Christopher Street Libe

By Brooke Sopelsa

The New York Times

Adamfoxie blog Int

When a bartender at Julius’ in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood refused to serve alcohol to a group of gay men in April 1966, photographer Fred McDarrah was there to capture the now-iconic “sip-in” protest. Three years later, he was once again on the front lines when gay and transgender people fought back against the police in what would later be known as the Stonewall uprising. The following year, on June 28, 1970, McDarrah was there again, this time to document New York City’s first gay pride march. This trend would continue for decades as the longtime Village Voice photographer captured and immortalized some of the most iconic milestones in LGBTQ history.

A current exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, “Fred W. McDarrah: Pride and Protest,” shines a light on McDarrah’s work documenting LGBTQ life, advocacy and icons in New York City with 60 black-and-white photographs spanning more than 30 years.

Mattachine Society “Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar, 159 W.

10th Street, New York, New York, April 21, 1966.

The Mattachine Society held a "sip-in" protest at Julius' bar in Greenwich Village on April 21, 1966, after a bartender refused to serve gay men alcohol.Fred W. McDarrah / MUUS Collection

“This exhibition and the history behind it and the history in front of it is about the history of the United States as much as it is about the history of the LGBTQ+ community,” said Marilyn Satin Kushner, the exhibit’s curator and the head of the New-York Historical Society’s department of prints, photographs and architectural collections.McDarrah, a Brooklyn native and World War II veteran, started at the Village Voice in the late 1950s selling ad space and taking occasional photographs. He became the paper’s primary photojournalist in 1964, when Greenwich Village was the epicenter of the artistic and cultural community — and arguably the unofficial headquarters of the country’s nascent gay rights movement.

 

While Greenwich Village may have been McDarrah’s world, the gay community was not his community — but he was able to build a rapport with front-line activists.

“He was trusted, and that’s an important part,” Kushner said when asked how McDarrah was able to secure a front-row seat to historic milestones like the Mattachine Society’s 1966 “sip-in” protest at Julius’ bar and New York City’s first gay pride march.

Untitled (Marsha P. Johnson, Fourth Christopher

Street Liberation Day March), New York, New

York, June 24, 1973.

Marsha P. Johnson at the fourth annual Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York on June 24, 1973.Fred W. McDarrah / MUUS Collection

The late writer Allen Ginsberg, who was openly gay and was photographed several times by McDarrah, said the photographer “paid humble attention year after year to his beat” and described him as a “curious intersection of journeymen journalist & cultural archivist.”

“Though not gay, a hard-laboring family man himself, he’s made photo records of gay parades for decades — sign of a real artist’s inquisitive sympathy, intelligent democracy,” Ginsberg, who died in 1997, wrote of McDarrah in an essay.

McDarrah was also always around the Greenwich Village neighborhood, which helped.

“It makes sense that he was able to capture a lot of those photographs before Stonewall and makes sense that he was in the Village the night of Stonewall and therefore was one of the few photographers who were there,” Kushner said. “It makes sense that he would know the people here and then know what was going on afterwards and know when there were going to be marches and who was involved in the marches.”

Untitled (Youths at Stonewall Uprising), New York, New

York, June 28, 1969.

A group gathered in front of Stonewall in New York on June 28, 1969.Fred W. McDarrah / MUUS Collection

McDarrah also knew personally and photographed some of the era’s most iconic queer creatives, including artist Andy Warhol, performer Candy Darling and writers James Baldwin and Susan Sontag.

“He used to take his kids to the Factory, to Andy Warhol’s Factory, and they’d babysit for him,” Kushner added.

McDarrah’s body of work went far beyond the LGBTQ community. He photographed a number of other social justice movements, including marches for women’s rights, Vietnam War protests and the 1963 March on Washington. His camera has also captured photos of some of the most famous politicians, entertainers and businessmen of his time, including Robert F. Kennedy, Bob Dylan and Donald Trump. He’s also known for photographing many of the most important Beat Generation writers, including Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs (in 1996, McDarrah and his wife, Gloria, published a book highlighting some of these photographs: “Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village”).

An important thing to note about McDarrah — who received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University in 1954 — is that he saw himself strictly as a photojournalist and a documentarian, not an art photographer, according to Kushner.

“He seldom cropped his photographs, because he said what he photographed, he wanted the whole thing to be shown, and he didn’t want it to be a fine-art photograph.”

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ACT UP Poster Announces Frequency of AIDS Deaths,

March 28, 1989.

Members of the AIDS activist group ACT UP protest on March 28, 1989.Fred W. McDarrah / MUUS Collection

In an interview published in a 1975 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal, McDarrah said he has “always looked at all of my work, as being documentary in its aesthetic.”

“I have never with any intention tried to create a beautiful photograph,” said McDarrah, who died in 2007 at 81 in his Greenwich Village home.

Despite his intentions, many fans of McDarrah’s work would argue that’s what he indeed created during his 50 years at the Village Voice, which ceased publication in 2017. And for those who want to judge for themselves, “Fred W. McDarrah: Pride and Protest” will be on view at the New-York Historical Society until July 13