McDarrah

The ultimate visual chronicle of life in New York’s gay community circa 1970, by the incomparable Fred 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, a staff photographer of the legendary Village Voice. In 1994, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Stonewall, A Cappella Books issued his lauded collection Gay Pride: Photographs from Stonewall to Today.

Working closely with the McDarrah family, and scanning from original negatives, OR Books has completely re-set the original edition of the book, now entitled Pride. The book includes a new foreword by New Yorker critic Hilton Als (who got his first job from McDarrah) and a period essay by Allen Ginsberg and Jill Johnston.