Duration: July 11, 2024 – Sepember 30, 2024
1000 linear meters of shelves in over 500 m² of space, an estimated 1.5 million items: Magazines and newspaper clippings, videos, posters, photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, flyers, medicine boxes, cruising packs, lighters, buttons, T-shirts, costumes, wigs, high heels, dildos, leather boots, numerous documents, e.g. from homopolitical organizations, an extensive GDR collection of various provenances, the Sternweiler collection with more than 6,000 objects, mainly from the first half of the 20th century. The Gay Museum has been collecting on the culture and history of LGBTIQ* communities since 1985 and is one of the world’s largest collections in this field. This includes extensive collections and estates of artists, such as the four photographers we present here, whose work plays a role in the exhibition Love At First Fight!: Rüdiger Trautsch, Krista Beinstein, Petra Gall and Jürgen Baldiga.
Curators: Birgit Bosold and Collin Klugbauer
Petra Gall (1955-2018)
Petra Gall moved to Berlin in 1981 and was a self-taught photographer. Together with Heidi Zimmermann, she founded the photo agency Zebra and worked for print media such as the taz, the city magazines Zitty and Tip, and the feminist magazine Courage. She is an important documenter of the (West) Berlin women’s and lesbian movement. There was hardly an event, demonstration or protagonist that she did not photograph. Another focus of her work was music photography, with fantastic shots of contemporary concerts by stars such as Nick Cave, Diamanda Galás, David Bowie and Nina Hagen. The most voluminous collection is travel photography. Beginning in the 1990s, Petra Gall undertook extensive motorbike tours, primarily through Eastern Europe, but also to many other parts of the world. She published numerous travel reports and a motorcycle travel guide for East Germany. Her estate has been part of the collection of the Schwules Museum since 2012 and comprises a total of around 200,000 objects. With the support of the Research and Competence Center Digitalization Berlin (digiS), around 6,000 negatives have been digitized in the last three years and are available to the public online on the museum-digital platform.
The series “Strong Women” documents the “Campeonato Europeo de Halterofilia de 1990”, the third edition of the European Women’s Weightlifting Championships, which took place on the Canary Island of Tenerife in 1990. Women have been allowed to compete in the World Weightlifting Championships since 1987 and in the European Championships since 1988.
“Strong Women”, 1990, original prints and digital prints
Krista Beinstein (*1955)
Born in Vienna in 1955, the photographer, author and performer has lived and worked in Hamburg for many years. Her first book with the programmatic title “Obscene Women” was published in 1986 and celebrated women’s lust for their lust. It is one of the earliest testimonies of the emerging sex-positive feminism in the German-speaking world. It has been followed by eight other volumes, all published by Konkursbuch Verlag in Tübingen. Her exhibitions in the 1980s were often attacked by “sex-critical” feminists who saw BDSM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission, Sadism & Masochism) as a patriarchal practice and found her work misogynistic. Beinstein is one of the most underestimated artists in the queer underground: grande dame of pornographic performance, enfant terrible of lesbian sex culture, and protagonist of sex-positive feminism.
“Tit Dominance“, series, 1988, original prints
Rüdiger Trautsch (1946-2021)
Rüdiger Trautsch is one of the predominant chroniclers of gay culture in Germany. After studying visual communications at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, he worked as a freelance photographer, taking portraits of the gay and later queer community as well as celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Meret Oppenheim and Marianne Sägebrecht. His photos of the 1972 Whitsun demonstration in West Berlin, one of the first public rallies of queer activists, are iconic. In 2018, he donated his legacy to the Schwules Museum, where it has been kept ever since. In 2023, SMU dedicated an exhibition of his work to him.
The series “In & Out” shows queer people in their homes, in everyday clothes and in drag, the outfit of their queer persona or genderqueer self.
Jürgen Baldiga (1959-1993)
The multidisciplinary artist and photographer Jürgen Baldiga was born in Essen in 1959 and died of AIDS-related illness in Berlin in 1993. Baldiga moved to Berlin in 1979, where he initially worked as a writer, performer, filmmaker, and musician. In 1985, he became a self-taught photographer after being diagnosed with an HIV infection that same year. In just eight years, from 1985 to 1993, Baldiga created an oeuvre that is one of the most important artistic explorations of HIV/AIDS, whose haunting depictions of death, physical decay, but also joie de vivre and humor are unique. In the context of AIDS and art, Baldiga should be mentioned in the same breath as American artist David Wojnarowicz and British filmmaker Derek Jarman, both of whom also died of AIDS-related illness in the 1990s. His work is not completely unknown, at least in Berlin. It has been honored in numerous exhibitions and publications, and large-format portraits of Berlin queers (and himself) are on permanent display at SchwuZ, the Berlin queer club founded in 1977, which still exists today. Two documentary films pay tribute to Baldiga: the 2019 film “Rettet das Feuer” by Jasco Viefhues and “Baldiga – Unlocked Heart” (2024) by Markus Stein.
Friends and Lovers, original prints
(Visual “Analog” & “Love At First Fight”, Foto: Yu Mitomi)