There are a few Pride march staples you’re likely to find every June, dating to the first such events in 1970: massive handheld fans, ornate gowns, voluminous wigs and loving embraces. But at the “Out of the Closets! Into the Streets!” exhibition at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York, there’s one thing missing — rainbow flags.
The photography collection, featuring 18 photographs taken by artist Francisco Alvarado-Juárez, depicts scenes from New York City Pride marches in 1975 and 1976 — just a few years before the LGBTQ flag was created in 1978. Alvarado-Juárez’s collection is a time portal in more than one way, though: The photos were all captured on Kodachrome film, an early type of color film that is now discontinued. The exhibition is on display and will run until Aug. 31. It serves as the second installment of the museum’s “Arte en el Alto Manhattan” series, which highlights upper Manhattan artists.
Born in Honduras and raised in New York City, Alvarado-Juárez said “Out of the Closets! Into the Streets!” is not just the name of the collection but a call to action.
“Especially as we got to areas where there were residential buildings, the people in the march would chant, would call out the people in the buildings to come down, you know, out of the closets into the street, to come down and join us, which was a very effective way to communicate with different people who were not part of the parade,” Alvarado-Juárez said in an interview.
Back then, in New York City, it wasn’t called a Pride march; it was the Christopher Street Liberation Day March or the Gay Liberation Parade. It began on June 28, 1970 — exactly one year after the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
Alvarado-Juárez, a painter, photographer and mixed media artist whose work has appeared in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, hadn’t anticipated the photos’ being shown in a museum 50 years later.
“I was taking it for myself,” Alvarado-Juárez said. “I was looking at the experience and taking photos as art for art, for the pleasure of doing art.”
The photos depict march participants donned in feather boas, floral fascinators and fringe metallic vests, posing throughout lower Manhattan with red, white and blue party balloons and banners behind them.
The exhibition is the Hispanic Society Museum and Library’s first LGBTQ initiative, according to its website. While the full exhibit ends in August, selected works from Alvarado will be shown on the museum’s outdoor terrace through next spring.
Alvarado-Juárez said he lives just a few blocks from the museum, which is in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, and has been going there for nearly 30 years.
“It is quite, quite different to be able to see my work at the museum, as opposed to just visiting and looking at those masterpieces on the walls in the halls,” he said.
Alvarado-Juárez said Pride Month, which is celebrated in June, has evolved over the years, with ’70s marches functioning more like parades and parties and marches during the AIDS epidemic functioning more like protests against the government for failing to respond to the crisis.
“As we get into this very dark period of our history with this new administration,” Alvarado-Juárez said, referring to the Trump administration’s policies targeting LGBTQ people, “maybe people can draw some good energy from these images and enjoy them for what they were back then but also enjoy them for the energy they still communicate.”
