Hidden in the Open: A Photographic Essay

By: Trent Kelley, playwright & poet

Sometimes it is difficult to write without anger. Pretending or denying that certain controversial truths do not exist, for the purpose of catering to a saccharine political correctness, wanting to make an individual comfortable, is dishonest. Transfiguring a string of independent words into coherent whole sentences without losing their intended integrity, but also not causing the reader to turn an exasperated and eventually disinterested blind eye toward, is complicated.

How does one write about the Afro American gay male and couple? How does one accomplish such a goal from an historical perspective?

Historically, the Afro American gay male and couple have largely been defined by everyone but themselves. Afro American gay men are ignored into nonexistence in parts of Black culture and are basically second-class citizens in gay culture. The Black church, which has historically played a fundamental role in protesting against civil injustices toward its parishioners, has been want to deny its gay members their right to live a life free and open without prejudice. Despite public projections of a “rainbow” community living together in harmonious co-habitation, openly active and passive prejudices exist in the larger gay community against gay Afro Americans.

Pockets within Afro American culture have, on occasion, wanted to deny that its men could ever be gay and part of the overall African American experience. “Gay” was traditionally conceived as a white man’s predicament, a sexual orientation and affliction common only to him. By persistent exposure to a culture not historically his own and which often sought to emasculate him, the persecuted Afro American man became “gay.” The prurient sexual interest in an otherwise “straight” Afro American male by a privileged white male effectively rendered a Black man “gay.” Of course, this was all nonsense as Africa has a long history of homosexuality predating European incursion into the Continent. Open acceptance of gay men varied from tribal community to tribal community. Gay men often occupied an honored high place in the African tribal community. In some instances, he either publicly or privately took another male as a marital partner without prejudice from his community. Where the predominant religious influence was Islam, the construct of male affection depended on the prejudices and custom within a specific local community, where, in some instances, a man had a wife for procreation and a socially quiet husband; the male couple was expected to be discreet about their relationship.

In the larger white-dominated U.S. gay culture, the Afro American gay male has been, and is often still, portrayed as a victim of Black homophobia needing the aide of a white gay savior. This is coupled with Black homophobia wanting to believe that two Afro American men cannot “desire” and “love” one another except as a consequence of exposure to the corrupting influence of a hostile white culture. Thus, the de facto interracial gay couple is ubiquitous in gay media. A misguided political correctness has only accentuated this problematic image. The vast majority of commercial photographic imagery within U.S. gay culture portrays the Afro American gay male coupled with a white male. Where accounts are written to document gay history, the dominant images are of the white male couple and the interracial couple. Taking cues from general gay culture, even mainstream academic scholars and the media have adopted these same tropes depicting white male or gay interracial couples. Gay pornography is the primary medium where Afro American male couples are countenanced, fetishistic centering on the Black phallus as Black gay pornography is typically not produced for an Afro American gay audience.

The selected images for this photo essay date from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Hopefully these images will challenge the false definitions of Afro American gay men and couples which have been imposed on them from the outside. Black gay men have recorded their affections in photographic form since the invention of the camera, defining themselves for themselves primarily. Not overtly perhaps, but tell tale signs of affection between lovers – as simple as a hand on the shoulder, a visible clasp of the hands, limbs gently touching or simply two bodies in close proximity to one another – were consciously articulated so as not to arouse the suspicions of a possibly censorious photographer not inclined to have an open mind.

It is important for Afro American and African Diasporic gay men to understand that they have a history of loving and desiring one another that is worth acknowledging and celebrating in whatever form. They, We, have a history of just being that is important. The photographs presented here are only the initial step of a defiant reclaiming that history. In her book, Portraits of a People: Picturing the African American in the Nineteenth Century, scholar Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw wrote of early African Americans encircled by a dominant society that controlled their lives and image:

The important move, from the margins of somebody else’s portrait into the center of one’s own, cannot be overstated….

Copyright 2010 by Trent Kelley

For more, please visit Trent Kelly’s blog at Wandering-Caravan

For additional images, please visit Trent’s Flickr stream at Bronze Buckaroo