Joy and Nudity at Dyke March in San Francisco: Phyllis Christopher’s Best Picture | Photography

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In San Francisco, the night before the annual Pride Parade is booked for the Dyke March, a celebration of lesbian life across the city. It was like Christmas – the biggest night of the year – and half of us were so hungry we wouldn’t make it Pride the next day.

I remember getting a call from an editor at On Our Backs, a women-run lesbian magazine that described itself as providing “entertainment for adventurous lesbians.” It was a bedrock of the lesbian community – one of the few ways to connect with each other, celebrate sex and educate each other about it at a time when AIDS has brought so much destruction to the gay communities. The editor wanted me to kiss, but her tone of voice sounded almost guilty—as if she couldn’t ask me to work on the biggest party night of the year. But for me, it was the most fun I could imagine.

Lesbians from all over the country, of whom I know many, gathered in the park, mingled and chatted with anyone who came – gay, straight, regardless of gender. But when the Dyke rally started, the crowds gave up and Dykes on Bikes took the lead, and the rest of us formed a column behind us.

I always found something beautiful in that moment: people step aside to give lesbians their place, to celebrate and applaud. Many women were presenting shirtless as a sign of their freedom. It’s time for lesbians to assert themselves in the public sphere, a moment of safety and joy.

It was a way to celebrate sex in the face of the death caused by AIDS – and to oppose those who blame us for it.

The rules of the Dyke March were pretty much “everything goes as long as it’s fun”. The women were celebrating being half-naked, feeling safe and supported by everyone. There were no protesters because there were too many gay people in San Francisco. It was a moment of unbridled abandon, marching through the streets, climbing bus stops, over cars, hanging from windows.

This shot was taken on 18th Street in Castro, one of the centers of exotic life in San Francisco. Anyone who has an apartment on Al Masirah Road will make full use of its windows. Every year, the residents of the houses tended to go out the windows, often raising banners, shouting at the crowd, and shouting at the crowd.

More than 20 years later, this image still shocks me in me: I feel powerful in it. It embodies a kind of joy that, at the time, was absolutely necessary. It was a way of celebrating sex in the face of the death caused by AIDS, opposing right-wing voices blaming us for the epidemic. We couldn’t get married and job security was still unequal across the United States for gay people. We still feel like outlaws.

In the 1980s, there was much debate among feminists about the importance of sex. Some took a hard line – that depictions of sex were offensive, even violent. While we owe everything to the lesbian feminists of the era—they paved the way in many ways—our generation wanted something different. We’ve been pro-network, pro-sex, and pro-pornography. Sex means a lot to us. We didn’t let her go. It was a kind of political hedonism.

It wasn’t a separatist by any means but the world we created in San Francisco seemed like a beautiful laboratory

There have been quite a few times in history where women run the camera, the press, and the publishing ecosystem. But the world we created in San Francisco looked like a beautiful laboratory. It wasn’t separatist by any means – we didn’t separate ourselves from men and non-lesbians – but we were working for each other. I think this is evident in these photos.

Publishing my work since then in book form has been a dream for me. I photographed that period intensely: I told such a story about that society, and I did not want to miss it. Images can be damaged, corrupted, or lost, and the relative paucity of lesbian publications means that this work is often absent from our collective archive. I’m so glad this survived.

I have great respect for the women who let me photograph them. It was a true political statement. But there was a feeling that it was also necessary to let other lesbian women know that they were not alone. There is always a stereotype about lesbians being angry. Oftentimes, we had a reason for that. But sometimes, we were too busy to have a great time.

Phyllis Christopher. Photo: Kate Sweeney Biography of Christopher

Born: Buffalo, New York, 1963 Trained: State University of New York at Buffalo Influences: Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Honey Lee Cottrell, Jessica Tanzer, Chloe Atkins, Leon Mostofoy, Mark Chester and Jill Posner. Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003 Published this year. Low Point: Shifting From Working in a Darkroom to the Digital World. I missed the magic and alchemy of revelation under the red lights. The first tip: “Follow your bliss – your heart always knows the answer.”

An exhibition of the work of Phyllis Christopher is running in the Baltic Sea, Gateshead, until March 20. The Darkroom: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003 Available now (£24).

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