Pride

A visual chronicle of life in New York’s gay community circa 1970, by the incomparable Fred W. McDarrah, released in time for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion and World Pride Day in June 2019.

Fifty years ago this spring, the Stonewall uprising occurred in Greenwich Village—an event that marked the coming-out of New York’s gay community and a refusal by gays to accept underground status that was as important in its way as the Montgomery bus boycott was to the civil rights movement. As a direct outcome of Stonewall, gay pride marches were held in 1970 in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

The ultimate chronicler of New York’s downtown scene in that period, and therefore of pre-AIDS life in the gay community, was the late Fred W. McDarrah, senior staff photographer of the legendaryVillage Voice. Twenty-five years ago, to mark Stonewall’s 25th anniversary, McDarrah brought out a work that became a classic: Gay Pride: Photographs from Stonewall to Today. That book has long been out of print. Now, scanning from original negatives, OR Books has lovingly re-set and re-designed the book, newly entitled Pride. This edition also includes a number of photographs not in the original and available nowhere else.

The book includes a new foreword byNew Yorker critic Hilton Als (who got his first job from McDarrah) and period essays by Allen Ginsberg and Jill Johnston.