Bernie & G.: a life in photos, before Stonewall

An album picked up at a Chicago estate sale tells of the warm intimacies of a private queer life

One of the most rewarding parts of my life these days is my service on the board of the Gerber/Hart Library & Archives, which has worked since 1981 to “preserve and make accessible the history and culture of the LGBTQ* communities in Chicago and the Midwest in order to advance the larger goal of achieving justice and equality.” There are many things I could tell you about that, but for now it’s only important because it explains how and why I got to view an amazing item donated to our collection before it was even processed and cataloged.

I was at the library a couple of Thursdays ago to help prepare for our spring book sale and took a look at a couple of new items donated to our collection. One was this photo album bought at a Chicago estate sale, which documents a few years—the irregular dating penciled on the back of the photos suggests they were taken between 1961-1964—in the lives of a gay couple in the years before Stonewall, which is to say that they were lives lived in the closet.

Over the past 30 years, historians, following the pathbreaking work of George Chauncey, have come to understand that the isolation and secrecy of “the closet” has not been a consistent feature of queer life in the United States, and the profound oppression and desperation implied by the epithet was mostly the condition of the mid 20th century. Urban gay communities flourished in the early decades of the century, more or less until the end of Prohibition; queer identity became the subject of heightened paranoia and scrutiny near the end of the Second World War. None of this is to say that, like, queer life was uncomplicated—that police violence, social derision, and economic marginalization were not problems—but simply that it was not suppressed in the same ways as it was at midcentury.

But, as I browsed the album, I also thought that we have to be careful to avoid thinking that queer lives at midcentury were were not rich and meaningful—that even under this regime of silence, there was not also pleasure, happiness, connection. The lives of these two men, Bernie and G., as documented here, suggest that they built a private world of abundance and love.

That’s about all I could deduce factually—that the photos were from 1961-1964, arranged chronologcally; that the man with dark hair was named Bernie which was written across his birthday cakes each late October; that his partner’s initials were G.M.; and that they lived somewhere in Chicago. Attesting to the near invisibility of public queer life, nearly all of the photos were taken in their apartment, but there are a few posed outside of what must be their building and a couple taken in either Lincoln Park or Hyde Park. If you recognize the landmarks, please let me know.)

For all the photos don’t reveal, they also attest to the richness of their lives together. They had impeccable taste and may have traveled frequently; they regularly threw parties for a small circle of friends and family members who seem entirely at ease with them; and, most obviously, they adored one another. Here are some of the quick photos I took of a few of the album’s pages.

There are lots of these sorts of individual portraits, all taken with a bit of an artsy eye. The gaze, no matter who held the camera, was also a loving one:

I also really liked these images they shot on a summer’s day. There’s no suggestion that any of the photos in the album were taken at anyone else’s home, and G. is comfortable enough to take his shirt off, so I assume this was in the courtyard of their building and relatively private.

Here are two of the only photos taken somewhere else. They were probably fairly close to home—Lincoln Park seems likely for sunbathing together, as I know it was a bit of a cruising ground.

These are the only photos with any real landmarks to speak of:

The album also includes some portraits of women who might be friends, but something about them suggests that the older women is a mother or aunt:

They cared about their beautifully decorated home a lot. In this photo they’re maybe repairing some lamps? (But also G.’s little midriff kills me.)

A collection of photos from a few years in a row gives us an opportunity to observe what holidays and rituals might have been like for this couple. They seem to have enjoyed a private Christmas morning together each year before hosting a dinner (which could have been the same day or on New Year’s, hard to tell). That’s what I think these first two depict—showing off new robes and slippers over breakfast. (They really loved shortie robes, which, to be fair, they both had great legs.) The G.M. monogram on the white robe is the only place I saw the lighter-haired man’s name or initials.

Bernie’s birthday always included cake and gathering with friends. (G. also wore lil midriff shirts sometimes, tee hee.)

My personal favorites, though, are these photos, which seem to document their roles as beloved gay uncles to a girl whose holiday style and haircut suggest that she absolutely grew up to be queer:

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I wish I’d taken more and better photos, but I hope these help you see what I did: that these men cherished one another and were loved by their friends and family and that they flourished in the privacy of the home they shared. I don’t know what they did for work or what their lives outside of their home were like or whether they were ever arrested for cruising or … whatever. But I do know that they made a place for themselves together, even in a hostile world. This is a really special item in our collection, and I’m so glad I get to share it with you.

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More about Gerber/Hart: Unboxing Queer History is our eight-episode podcast highlighting our collections! I and others will be in conversation with Sarah Schulman on March 8 at Whiskey Girl Tavern. Our Spring Gala is April 20 at Sidetrack. And if you’re moved to, please donate to support our work (and put my name in the Comments field so we know how you found your way to us)!