Touching Photographs of Same-Sex Couples Relaxing in Their Homes in the 1980s ~ Vintage Everyday

September 29, 2015

Touching Photographs of Same-Sex Couples Relaxing in Their Homes in the 1980s

September 29, 2015 1980s, dating & love, family, LGBT, life & culture, portraits

In the late 1970s, Sage Sohier discovered that her father, who had separated from her mother when she was a young child, was gay. Because he persisted in a mostly closeted existence, the revelation drove her explore his world more intimately by interviewing and photographing gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances within their private homes. Soon, she branched out into gay clubs and pride marches, building a wide network of couples who wanted to be photographed and interviewed for the project. She traveled throughout the country, posting ads for subjects in local gay newsletters.

For At Home with Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980s America, Sohier captures quiet moments in the domestic lives of homosexual families between 1986 and 1988, during the later years of the AIDS epidemic and at the beginning of a newly emerging gay rights movement.
“My ambition was to make pictures that challenged and moved people and that were interesting both visually and psychologically,” she said