Pride and Protest explores McDarrah’s work at the intersection of community media, documentary photography, queer culture, activism, and allyship. Featuring portraits of luminaries including James Baldwin, Marsha P. Johnson, Andy Warhol, Candy Darling, and Larry Kramer of ACT UP, the exhibition also includes scenes from the revolution such as the 1966 “Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar, 1969 Stonewall Uprising, and first Gay Pride March the following year.
Although married with children, McDarrah aligned himself with Gay Liberation throughout his life. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg wrote of the photographer: “Though not gay, a hard-laboring family man himself, he’s made photo records of gay parades for decades – sign of a real artist’s inquisitive sympathy, intelligent democracy.”
The first iteration of Pride and Protest was curated for 2023 Paris Photo by writer Vince Aletti, a longtime contributor to the Village Voice. Originally a music journalist who broke disco with his seminal column in Record World magazine, Aletti joined the Voice where he expanded to the culture beat. “The great thing about The Voice was that they allowed everyone to have their own personality,” he says of the motley crew of literary leftists that made the paper the downtown bible.
