Pride and Protests: Photographs by Fred W. McDarrah

This exhibition represents a view of queer cultural life and the LGBTQ rights movement in New York City, from the period before the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, continuing through activist protests around the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Longtime Greenwich Village photographer Fred W. McDarrah (1926–2007) was the first picture editor and staff photographer for the legendary New York City newspaper The Village Voice. The earliest of the exhibition’s 61 works are portraits of renowned poets Frank O’Hara in 1959, and W.H. Auden in 1966. Included in the exhibition are pictures of protests, marches, and key figures of the gay rights movement in all its contentious and celebratory public display.

Coinciding with the advent of Pride month, Pride and Protest is curated by prominent photography critic and author Vince Aletti, from the Fred W. McDarrah Archive held by MUUS Collection. It was first presented by MUUS Collection at Paris Photo in November 2023; after CPW, the exhibition will travel to the New-York Historical Society in January 2025. The exhibition is accompanied by a newsprint publication with a text by Aletti.