1. Glenn Ligon, A Feast of Scraps, 1994-1998

2. 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

3. Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, Untitled (Cahun in Mirror), ca
Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, Untitled (Cahun in Mirror), ca (detail) Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, Untitled (Moore in Mirror), ca. 1929

4. The photographer’s shadow that regularly intrudes on the space of the photograph, the double exposures and mirror imaging, may be viewed as both uncanny and as intimations of an unseen collaboration, the “other me.” tirza true latimer

5. Our two heads (hair intermingling inextricably) inclined over a photograph. Portrait of one or of the other, our two narcissisms drowning together here, it was the impossible realized in a magic mirror. Exchange, superimposition, the fusion of desires. The unity of the image achieved through the close intimacy of two bodies. claude cahun

6. Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, I’m in Training, Don’t Kiss Me, ca. 1928

7. Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, Self-Portrait with Mask, ca. 1928

8. Aubrey Beardsley, The Peacock Skirt, 1894 Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, ca. 1893

9. Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, “La réponse,” Vues et visions, 1919

10. Kirsten McCrea, Gertrude Stein, from Hot Topic, 2006 – ongoing Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein,

11. Man Ray, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in the apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, 1922

13. Alice Pike Barney, Natalie in Fur Cape, 1897 Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, 1920

14. Portrait of Natalie Clifford Barney and Romaine Brooks Romaine Brooks, Self Portrait, 1923

15. A place where lesbian assignations and appointments with academics could coexist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating cognitive dissonance. joan schenkar

16. Portrait of Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell, Self-portrait, ca. 1915

17. Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf Knitting, ca
Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf Knitting, ca Portrait of Clive Bell by Roger Fry, ca. 1924

18. Portrait of Roger Fry by Vanessa Bell, 1912 Portrait of Vanessa Bell by Roger Fry (date unknown)

19. Portrait of Vanessa Bell by Duncan Grant, 1917 Portrait of Duncan Grant by Vanessa Bell, 1920

20. Portrait of Duncan Grant by David Garnett, 1915 Portrait of David Garnett by Duncan Grant, 1930

21. Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel No
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel No. 1: During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans,

22. The Cotton Club The Savoy Club

23. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a homosexual subculture, uniquely Afro-American in substance, began to take shape in New York’s Harlem. Throughout the so-called Harlem Renaissance period, roughly 1920 to 1935, black lesbians and gay men were meeting each other [on] street corners, socializing in cabarets and rent parties, and worshiping in church on Sundays, creating a language, a social structure, and a complex network of institutions. eric garber

24. Gladys Bentley ( )

25. Langston Hughes ( )

26. Stills from Looking for Langston, 1989 Directed by Isaac Julien