Donna Gottschalk (b. 1949, New York) grew up in the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side in the 1950s, where she spent much of her time on the streets. This backdrop, often of violence and homophobia, shaped her and the way she saw the world: raw, real and up close.
Involved in the early lesbian, trans and gay rights movements, her intimate photographs of the daily lives of her chosen family – friends, lovers, siblings and fellow activists – are a tender portrait of people living on the margins. At a time when gay relationships were still illegal in the US, she described the people she photographed as ‘brave and defiant warriors.’
'I got my first camera at 17 and discovered all of these noble, marginalised people who were entering my life. I forced myself to become brave and ask to take their pictures… Sometimes they asked me why and my answer always was: “Because you are beautiful and I never want to forget you.”’
Donna Gottschalk
We Others brings together Gottschalk’s photographs with texts by writer Hélène Giannecchini. When Hélène first met Donna in 2023, they bonded over their shared determination to make lives obscured in mainstream history exist in another way.
Hélène reflected on their first meeting: ‘I realised that this was a special encounter, that we would be bound together from then on and that those photos, taken twenty years before I was born, also had something to say about my life.’
The exhibition is co-produced with Le BAL, Paris, The Photographers’ Gallery and the GwinZegal Art Center, Guingamp.
