Approximately 120 years ago, this couple held opposite edges of a sign whilst posing for this photo in a very different world than the one we live in today.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, preprinted signs reading “Not Married But Willing To Be” were common novelty props supplied by photography studios. They were intended to be used tongue-in-cheek by solo, single men who were dressed in their Sunday best. The photograph would then be shared as a playful advertisement to local women that the bachelor was available for marriage.
Instead of a solo man looking for a wife, this photograph subverts that norm entirely: two young men hold the sign together, each gripping an edge. While they posed for this photo in an era when male partnerships were strictly criminalized and socially suppressed, their intimate posture, proximity, and shared declaration quietly signaled a desire to be legally wed to one another. Authors and curators have noted that the couple actually took at least five different photographs together to memorialize their relationship.
The photo serves as the famous cover image for Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s. The book is drawn from the Nini-Treadwell Collection, an archive of more than 4,000 vintage photographs meticulously accumulated over two decades by married couple Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell. They traveled the globe, scouring flea markets, antique shops, family albums, and estate sales, to rescue lost moments of male romance that families often hid away or destroyed out of shame.
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