Kay Lahusen (b. January 5, 1930 also known as Kay Tobin) is considered the first openly gay photojournalist of the gay rights movement. Lahusen's photographs of lesbians appeared on several of the covers of The Ladder from 1964 to 1966 while her partner, Barbara Gittings, was the editor. Lahusen helped with the founding of the original Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970, she contributed to a New York-based weekly newspaper named Gay Newsweekly, and co-authored The Gay Crusaders with Randy Wicker.

Lahusen was born and brought up in Cincinnati, Ohio 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.

Lahusen spent the next six years in Boston working in the reference library of the Christian Science Monitor. She met Barbara Gittings in 1961 at a Daughters of Bilitis picnic in Rhode Island. 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.


Lesbian couple, portrait, 1977 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1606450)

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.


Lilli Vincenz, cover for The Ladder


Sylvia Rivera in front of fountain, 1970 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1605885)


Men kissing under tree, 1977-78 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1606388)


Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke at Gay's offices in New York City (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1606578)


Barbara Gittins in shower, circa 1962 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1605708)


Michael McConnell and Jack Baker, 1970 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1605976)

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 newspaper called Gay Newsweekly, and worked in New York City's Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, 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, and photographed thousands of activists, marches, and events in the 1960s and 1970s. Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols and many other gay activists became her subjects.


Barbara Gittings picketing the White House, 1965 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1605753)


Kay Lahusen marching at the first Annual Stonewall Reminder in 1969


Jack Nichols in picket line in 1988 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1605777)


Barbara Gittings and Randy Wicker in picket line, 1966 (http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1605796)

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 in Philadelphia and the Wilmington Institute Library in Delaware. In 2007, all of Lahusen's photos and writings and Gittings' papers and writings were donated to the New York Public Library. 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 in an assisted living facility.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Lahusen


Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen, 1991, by Robert Giard (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1082045)

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

Further Readings:

Making Gay History: The Half Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights by Eric Marcus
Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial (May 28, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060933917
ISBN-13: 978-0060933913
Amazon: Making Gay History: The Half Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights

From the Boy Scouts and the U.S. military to marriage and adoption, the gay civil rights movement has exploded on the national stage.Eric Marcus takes us back in time to the earliest days of that struggle in a newly revised and thoroughly updated edition of Making History, originally published in 1992.Using the heart-felt stories of more than 60 people, he carries us through the compelling five-decade battle that has changed the fabric of American society.

The rich tapestry that emerges from Making Gay History includes the inspiring voices of teenagers and grandparents, journalists and housewives, from the little known Dr. Evelyn Hooker and Morty Manford to former Vice President Al Gore, Ellen DeGeneres, and Abigail Van Buren. Together, these many stories bear witness to a time of astonishing change as gay and lesbian people have struggled against prejudice and fought for equal rights under the law.

Gay Power: An American Revolution by David Eisenbach
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 18, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786719346
ISBN-13: 978-0786719341
Amazon: Gay Power: An American Revolution

The definitive history of how the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s sparked an American revolution that transformed a nation.

Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement by Marcia M. Gallo
Paperback: 274 pages
Publisher: Seal Press (September 28, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1580052525
ISBN-13: 978-1580052528
Amazon: Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement

Nearly fifteen years before the birth of gay liberation, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the world’s first organization committed to lesbian visibility and empowerment. Like its predominantly gay male counterpart, the Mattachine Society, DOB was launched in response to the oppressive anti-homosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were arrested, fired from jobs, and had their children taken away simply because of their sexual orientation. It was against this political backdrop that a circle of San Francisco lesbians formed a private club where lesbians could meet others in a safe, affirming setting. The small social group evolved over the next two decades into a national organization that counted more than a dozen chapters, and laid the foundation for today’s lesbian rights movement.

Different Daughters chronicles this movement and the women who fought the church and state in order to change not only our nation’s perception of homosexuality, but how lesbians see themselves. Marcia Gallo has interviewed dozens of former DOB members, many of whom have never spoken on record. Through its leaders, magazine, and network of local chapters, DOB played a crucial role in creating lesbian identity, visibility, and political strategies in Cold War America.