Gay Pride in the 1950s: Two Young Men Kissing in a Photo Booth in 1953

More than 60 years ago, a gay couple found the freedom to show affection for each other in the safe confines a photo booth.

Joseph John Bertrund Belanger (right) kisses a man in a photo booth. “PGE exhibition, Hastings Park.” Vancouver, Circa 1953. Photo: ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC Libraries

By today’s standards, this photo shouldn’t raise any eyebrows, but in 1953, the year it was taken, this photo would have been reason enough for law enforcement to harass and arrest these men.

TIME reports that the photo was once owned by Joseph John Bertrund Belanger, who is featured on the right-hand side of the picture. Belanger was born in Edmonton, Canada in 1925, and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1942 to 1944.

Joseph John Bertrund Belanger (right) shares a tender moment with a man in a photo booth. “PGE exhibition, Hastings Park.” Vancouver, Circa 1953. Photo: ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC Libraries.

When he was in his 20s, Belanger moved to California. In the early 1950s, he was one of the original members of the Mattachine Society, one of the first LGBT organizations in the country.

In addition to that, Belanger was the Los Angeles coordinator of the Eulenspiegel Society, oldest and largest BDSM education and support group in the United States, in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he was involved with the San Francisco chapter of the Stonewall Gay Democratic Club, as well as Project Inform and the Quarantine Fighter’s Group.

Throughout his lifetime, Belanger was a devoted collector of historical LGBT artifacts and materials. These two photographs of him are now part of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, the largest repository of LGBT materials in the world, along with several of Belanger’s letters, notebooks, and audio recordings.

Gay Pride Parade in Chicago, ca. 1970s

Photographs of Gay Liberation Day March and Dance, 1970s

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, violent protests and street demonstrations took over the streets of New York after a police raid of Stonewall Inn, the now-legendary Greenwich Village gay bar. Known as the Stonewall Riots, these protests are commonly considered the tipping point at which the LGBT community coalesced into political cohesion and the birth of the modern gay rights movement. On that June morning, equality for all seemed a distant but necessary dream — a dream that has finally become reality a day shy of 44 years later.

In 1970, to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings, the very first Gay Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Philadelphia's first Gay Pride rally and march, June 11, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen via NYPL)

Annapolis students at Philadelphia's first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen via NYPL)

Gay couple at Toronto's first Gay Pride Week, August 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen via NYPL)

Philadelphia's first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen via NYPL)

Philadelphia's first Gay Pride rally, 1972 (Photograph: Kay Tobin Lahusen via NYPL)

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Vintage Photographs From the '70s Gay Rights Protests

In 1969, the New York Stonewall riots ignited a fire under the LGBT rights movement. Not only were LGBT citizens now demanding a more open and public position in society, but that visibility also led to a lot of backlash from the conservative side.

That being said, the 1970s saw a lot of traction, momentum, and gains in the fight for equality. For example, the work of Evelyn Hooker forced the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from their list of mental disorders in 1973. And in 1977 Harvey Milk, an openly gay activist, was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. Those are just a few examples, and the below photos represent moments from those protests that helped pave the road to equality.

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Sleepless Nights in Paris' Red Light District: 34 Intimate Photographs Document the Lives of Parisian Transsexual Prostitutes in the 1950s and 1960s

Christer Strömholm (1918–-2002) was one of the great photographers of the 20th century, but he is little known outside of his native Sweden.

Arriving in Paris in 1959, Strömholm settled in Place Blanche in the heart of the city's red-light district. There, he befriended and photographed young transsexuals struggling to live as women and to raise money for sex-change operations.

“These are images of people whose lives I shared and whom I think I understood. These are images of women—biologically born as men—that we call ‘transsexuals,’” Strömholm wrote in his book of the series, Les Amies de Place Blanche, published in 1983.

His surprisingly intimate portraits and lush Brassaï-like night scenes form a magnificent, dark, and at times quite moving photo album, a vibrant tribute to these girls, the "girlfriends of Place Blanche."

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