And he was gentle, laid-back – all the things I wasn’t.
He was tall and slim with auburn hair and blue-grey eyes and a full beard and moustache. I was 27 when we met, working as a medical photographer he was a year older and at college, studying for his Second Engineer’s certificate. I just knew I had to do theĭaniel and I had been married for 18 years. Tears were falling from my eyes as I looked up the number for social services and picked up the phone. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding, an over-tactile father who would have to learn to respect He brushes against my breasts so I know it’s not accidental, but he could persuade someone else it was.’ She looked into my eyes and must have been reassured by what she saw. ‘Come home and tell me about it,’ I begged. In the seconds it took me to absorb her words, my world came tumbling down. And f*** you, you probably won’t believe me anyway.’ She was talking about her father – telling me that he had been sexually abusing her for the past five years. ‘I have to leave or he has to,’ she had written. The following evening, I was in the living room when she burst in, flung a piece of paper at me and stormed out. At bedtimewe kissed goodnight, but for the first time we parted with a coolness between us. She began making hurtful personal attacks on her father and me, something she had never done.
But that day she was impervious to reasoned argument. Tamsin and I squabbled, like all mothers and daughters. That was when the first hint of discord arose. At 15, she was a weekly boarder at a specialist school for high-ability dyslexics.ĭo. Was at school, and I was looking forward to spending some time with Tamsin, who had just broken up for the holidays. It started out fine, that Tuesday in December 1996. But I never for a moment dreamt that we were extraordinary – until As a ship’s engineer, my husband Daniel worked away from home for up to four months at a time. Note: “McInturff, Steve Book, Delaware O.In many ways, we were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two kids, a Volvo in the drive. 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. 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.