![vietnamese gay men making love vietnamese gay men making love](https://www.starobserver.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Screen-shot-2016-03-24-at-3.42.13-PM.png)
Mostly behind closed doors at home with gay Vietnamese couples.
VIETNAMESE GAY MEN MAKING LOVE SERIES
The result, a series of portraits called “ the Pink Choice,” is a powerfully intimate look at love, shot “I saw many different things around me,” she said via Skype from Hanoi, “and wanted to change minds.” So she decided to tackle the subject herself. Then she recalled the couples she had met in Cambodia, who were “really happy and very open” and far from the displeasing images she saw in Vietnamese media. They were stereotypical - even harsh - depictions of love. Many were shot from the back, and some wore masks. None of the pictures she saw revealed the faces of their subjects. While she had gay friends, she wasn’t sure if she felt passionate about the subject to continue.īut her feelings changed when she saw an exhibition there about Vietnam’s L.G.B.T. Elan put the portrait project aside when she returned to Hanoi.
![vietnamese gay men making love vietnamese gay men making love](https://media.urbanistnetwork.com/saigoneer/article-images/2019/Dec/19/queer_subtext_web_3h.jpg)
Needing a subject, she found Pink Choice, a Web site catering to same-sex couples traveling together - “kind of a Lonely Planet for gay and lesbian people,” she Elan, a young Vietnamese photographer, had traveled there for the Angkor Photo Festival to take a workshop with the Magnum photographer Antoine D’Agata.
![vietnamese gay men making love vietnamese gay men making love](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JNS4f-aZOOg/V3vDOmVqQRI/AAAAAAAAESE/Kt-VPQawMv8OotX0Mr_GphMSQ6luhtvWwCK4B/s1600/CmAY1hzVEAE1qwU.jpg)
Were foreigners - told her she was welcome to take their portraits. She was surprised when most of the guests - many of whom Note: “McInturff, Steve Book, Delaware O.Maika Elan didn’t know what to expect two years ago when she knocked on doors at a popular hotel for gay and lesbian couples in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Photo strip, undated, 35 x 27 mm, provenance: US, (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, 1951, 121 x 83 mm, note: “1951” “Davis & J.C.” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, Undated, 96 x 67 mm (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Cabinet card, circa 1880, 167 x 109 mm, provenance: US, The book, Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s (5 Continents Editions), is available online.
![vietnamese gay men making love vietnamese gay men making love](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/06/21/kai_family-photo_custom-9b83d13b04992d07d18f863640d3613f3c97a739-s800-c85.jpg)
When we see them as connected, we feel more whole, and that’s what love is about for many of us anyway. Seeing ourselves in the past is as much about being certain of our present and, dare I say, our future. What do images of men in love during a time when it was illegal tell us? What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together? Flipping through the book, it wasn’t that I felt that I learned a great deal about being LGBTQ, but what gave me comfort was the feeling that we’re not going anywhere. While the majority of the images hail from the United States and are of predominantly white men, there are images from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, and the United Kingdom among the cache. The collection belongs to Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, a married couple who has accumulated over 2,800 photographs of “men in love” during the course of two decades. In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, hundreds of images tell the story of love and affection between men, with some clearly in love and others hinting at more than just friendship. Hunter” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions)Ī beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a new book that offers a visual glimpse of what life may have been like for those men, who went against the law to find love in one another’s arms. Postcard, circa 1910, 90 x 141 mm, note on front: “E.