LOVING - Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s
A
loving City - Queerberra Revisited
Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG), Gallery 2 | 6 December 2025 to 5 April 2026
Whilst most certainly being complementary, these two exhibitions in adjoining spaces are also very different to each other. LOVING – Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s is, obviously, only about men. The large number of photographs in the display is essentially monochromatic.
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| Installation image - LOVING – Photographs of men in Love, 1850s to 1950s © Brian Rope |
But, when visitors walk through into the next space to A loving City – Queerberra Revisited they will immediately see colour images hung against a background of vivid rainbow colours.
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| Installation image - A loving City – Queerberra Revisited © Brian Rope |
The content of LOVING was created by collectors and arts professionals Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell. That married couple discovered an old photograph of two other men in a tender loving embrace at an antique store in Dallas, Texas, 25 years ago. The image sparked a passion which resulted in a global journey searching for other photographs capturing men in love. They searched flea markets, auction houses, family albums and online collections, gradually gathering from all over the world over 4,000 tender images of male couples taken between the 1850s and 1950s - 100 years of social history and the development of photography.
In 2020, they published a book internationally, showing hundreds of the previously unpublished vernacular photographs depicting romantic love between men that powerfully and movingly reasserted both that love is love and that there had always been men who loved each other. It and this exhibition tenderly portray romantic love between men. There are snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied places and situations. Often taken when male partnerships were illegal, the collectors identified the men in the images as couples by what they have described as the unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love, by their body language, and even by coded inscriptions. There is a diversity of image formats - ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, and more.
Three years later, the collection was exhibited for the first time at the Musée Rath in Geneva. Now, it is being displayed in Australia, co-presented by CMAG and the Delegation of the European Union to Australia. The photographs on display have been digitised. They tell stories which have a considerable impact when we consider them. They speak to spirit and resilience. LOVING brings to light the lives and stories of male couples from around the world - giving voice to their courage, intimacy and enduring love for their “other halves”.
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Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s © The Nini-Treadwell collection |
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| Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s © The Nini-Treadwell collection |
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Unknown subject, Loving: Photographs of Men in Love 1850s-1950s © The Nini-Treadwell collection |
The
second exhibition, A Loving City: Queerberra Revisited, is a return to a
2017 portrait series - Queerberra by photographer Jane Duong and
producer Victoria Firth-Smith.
Created between 2015 and 2017, in the lead-up to Australia’s same-sex marriage postal vote, the original project captured over 100 portraits of LGBTQIA+ Canberrans in their homes, workplaces and everyday spaces. Over weekends spent in bedrooms, workplaces, and on the streets, portraits of pride, exhaustion, defiance, love, and hope were captured with grace and honesty. Some subjects were already out. Others came out for the first time. This unique art project set out to portray the beauty of Canberra’s rich array of local identities from LGBTIQ, asexual and cisgender peoples, to drag queens and kings, and beyond. Everyday lives were captured and shared with pride - some had not been ‘out’ publicly, others were very much in the public eye.
On 15 November 2017, Canberra’s voters delivered Australia’s strongest "Yes" vote in support of marriage equality. The Queerberra book was launched the very next day. Eight years later, this revisiting of the book and original exhibition showcases 99 of the original 100 portraits from that book and invites audiences to consider how much things have changed in that time.
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| Caitlin and Jill, Queerberra - photography by Jane Duong and produced by Victoria Firth-Smith |
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| James, Queerberra - photography by Jane Duong and produced by Victoria Firth-Smith |
These two exhibitions are simultaneously intensely intimate and deeply political. Each
one stands alone in its story and tone; together they form a larger narrative
about connection across generations, time periods and other things that often
divide us.
This review is also available on the author's blog. And a shorter version is on a Canberra City News webpage.
