Kay Lahusen - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kay Lahusen is considered the first openly gay photojournalist of the gay rights movement. Lahusen's photographs of lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

s appeared on several of the covers of The Ladder
The Ladder (magazine)
The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and once every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization...

from 1964 to 1966 while her partner, Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for gay equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that...

, was the editor. Lahusen helped with the founding of the original Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970, she contributed to a New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

-based weekly newspaper named Gay Newsweekly, and co-authored The Gay Crusaders with Randy Wicker

Randy Wicker

Randolfe Hayden "Randy" Wicker is an American author, activist and blogger. After involvement in the early homophile and gay liberation movements, Wicker became active around the issue of human cloning....

Early life

Lahusen was born and brought up in Cincinnati, Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

and developed her interest in photography as a child. "Even as a kid I liked using a little box camera and pushing it and trying to get something artsy out of it," she recalled. She discovered while in college that she had romantic feelings for a woman and she had a relationship with her for six years, but after the woman left "in order to marry and have a normal life," Lahusen was devastated by the loss.

The Ladder covers

Lahusen spent the next six years in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

working in the reference library of the Christian Science Monitor. She met Barbara Gittings in 1961 at a Daughters of Bilitis

Daughters of Bilitis

The Daughters of Bilitis , was the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco in 1955, conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment...

picnic in Rhode Island

Rhode Island

The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

. They became a couple and Lahusen moved to Philadelphia to be with Gittings. When Gittings took over The Ladder in 1963, Lahusen made it a priority to improve the quality of art on the covers. Where previously there were simple line drawings, characterized by Lahusen as "pretty bland, little cats, insipid human figures," Lahusen began to add photographs of real lesbians on the cover beginning in September 1964. The first showed two women from the back, on a beach looking out to sea. But Lahusen really wanted to add full-face portraits of lesbians. "If you go around as if you don't dare show your face, it sends forth a terrible message," Lahusen remembered. Several covers showed various women willing to pose in profile, or in sunglasses, but in January 1966 she was finally able to get a full face portrait. Lilli Vincenz, open and smiling, adorned the cover of The Ladder. By the end of Gittings' period as editor, Lahusen remembered there was a waiting list of women who wanted to be full-face on the cover of the magazine. Lahusen also wrote articles in The Ladder under the name Kay Tobin, a name she picked out of the phone book, and which she found was easier for people to pronounce and remember.

Photojournalism

Lahusen photographed Gittings and other people who picketed federal buildings and Independence Hall in the mid to late 1960s. She contributed photographs and articles to a Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

newspaper called Gay Newsweekly, and worked in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore

Oscar Wilde Bookshop

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop was the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors. It was founded by Craig Rodwell in 1967 as the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. Initially located at 291 Mercer Street, it moved in 1973 to Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York, United States...

, the first bookstore devoted to better literature on gay themes, and to disseminating materials that promoted a gay political agenda. She worked with Gittings in the gay caucus of the American Library Association

American Library Association

The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....

, and photographed thousands of activists, marches, and events in the 1960s and 1970s. Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols

Jack Nichols (activist)

John Richard "Jack" Nichols was an American gay rights activist. He co-founded the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961 with Franklin E. Kameny. He appeared in a 1967 documentary under the pseudonym Warren Adkins.- Biography :Nichols was born in Washington, D.C. to parents of...

and many other gay activists became her subjects.

Later life

In the 1980s Lahusen became involved in real estate, and placed ads in gay papers. She also organized agents to get them to march in New York City's Gay Pride Parade. More recently, her photographs have been featured in exhibits at The William Way Community Center

William Way Community Center

The William Way LGBT Center is a nonprofit organization serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and nearby communities, located at 1315 Spruce Street in Philadelphia....

in Philadelphia and the Wilmington Institute Library in Delaware

Delaware

Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...

. In 2007, all of Lahusen's photos and writings and Gittings' papers and writings were donated to the New York Public Library

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...

. Lahusen and Gittings were together for 46 years when Gittings died of breast cancer on February 18, 2007. Lahusen was working on collecting her photographs for a photography scrapbook on the history of the gay rights movement when Gittings' illness put the plans on hold. Lahusen currently resides in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

Kennett Square is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is known as the Mushroom Capital of the World because mushroom farming in the region produces over a million pounds of mushrooms a year...

in an assisted living facility.

External links

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