1. Molly Landreth, Ronni and Jo, Seattle, WA, 2005

2. Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948

3. Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950

4. Hans Namuth photographs of Jackson Pollock, 1950

6. Hans Namuth, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, 1953

7. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner

8. John Cage and Merce Cunningham Cage, Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg

9. Andy Warhol

10. Gran Fury, Read My Lips (Boys), 1988 Gran Fury, The Government has Blood on Its Hands, 1988

11. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1957-1996

12. Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, November 16 – January 6, 1990, Protest outside Artists Space

13. The influence of the New Morality and the effective use of AIDS as the most powerful tool for sexual repression makes it even more imperative to continue to create and exhibit art that portrays sexuality as a positive force. nan goldin

14. Robert Mapplethorpe, The Perfect Moment, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, December 9 – January 29, 1989

15. Robert Mapplethorpe, Joe, 1978 Ken Moody and Robert Sherman, 1984

16. Cover of ARTFORUM, September 1989 Robert Mapplethorpe, Rosie, 1976

17. The NEA Four (and Martha Wilson): Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, John Fleck, Karen Finley, 2004

19. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, DC, October 30 – February 13, 2011

20. David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (film in progress), 1986-87 (still)

21. Protests against the Smithsonian’s removal of Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly from Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

22. Queer and other insurgents have long striven, often dangerously or scandalously, to cultivate what good folks used to call criminal intimacies. We have developed relations and narratives that are only recognized as intimate in queer culture: girlfriends, gal pals, fuckbuddies, tricks. Queer culture has learned not only how to sexualize these and other relations, but also to use them as a context for witnessing intense and personal affect while elaborating a public world of belonging and transformation. Making a queer world has required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation. lauren berlant & michael warner

23. Jamie Q, What Makes an Object Queer?, 2011

24. If we presume that sexuality is crucial to bodily orientation, to how we inhabit spaces, then the differences between how we are orientated sexually are not only a matter of “which” objects we are orientated toward, but also how we extend through our bodies in the world. Sexuality would not be seen as determined only by object choice, but as involving differences in one’s very relation to the world—that is, in how one “faces” the world or is directed toward it. Or rather, we could say that orientations toward sexual objects affect other things that we do, such that different orientations, different ways of directing one’s desires, means inhabiting different worlds. sara ahmed

25. It is not simply the object that determines the “direction” of one’s desire; rather the direction one takes makes some others available as objects to be desired. Being directed toward the same sex or the other sex becomes seen as moving along different lines. sara ahmed

27. THE BRADY BUNCH!

28. From Awkward Family Photos website (with apologies if these are your family photos)

29. From Awkward Family Photos website (again, sincere apologies, if these are your photos)

30. Still from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 Frank, Brad, and Janet

31. United Colors of Benetton, 1992 Photograph of David Kirby and family by Therese Frare, 1990

32. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991

33. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991

34. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Bed), 1991

35. Molly Landreth, Ronni and Jo, Seattle, WA, 2005

36. Covering the walls, are photographs. The wedding photograph
Covering the walls, are photographs. The wedding photograph. Underneath are the family pictures, some formal and others more casual … Everywhere I turn, even in the failure of memory, reminds me of how the family home puts objects on display that measure sociality in terms of the heterosexual gift. sara ahmed

40. Jim Verburg, Family Album Number One, 2009

45. Jim Verburg, For a Relationship, 2007

58. No one seems to have a sexuality … except for me. jim verburg

59. Glenn Ligon,
A Feast of Scraps,

60. We are taught that, if we feel we really must have a record of the shameful same-sex portions of our lives, then we should do so by having two albums, dual collections, one for blood relations and one for our same gender loving brothers and sisters. And they should not be allowed to intersect. Our orientation is meant to be isolated, separate from and alien to the lives we live with our ‘real’ families. Far too often, however, within this constellation of the ‘real,’ black gays and lesbians wonder if we will even be in the viewfinder when the family portrait is taken. glenn ligon