Magazines and gay pride

It has long been a bugbear of mine that magazines aren’t archived properly or enough. There are many reasons why it doesn’t happen, but as cultural (and counter-cultural) artifacts, magazines are invaluable – and so often lost and forgotten. What people were reading, by whom it was published, and how it was circulated, tell us huge amounts about a time, a place and a group of people, far more revealing in many cases than the ever-constant, often-reactionary mainstream press.

I don’t have to tell Robert Newman that, for he has been tireless in his archiving and resurrecting of magazine history. Witness today’s email from him:

“We’re very excited about [our] month-long series, which includes a daily posting of a cover from a historical gay or lesbian magazine, or a cover from a mainstream magazine featuring an important gay personality. We’ve also collected specialized galleries on After Dark, Christopher Street, pre-Stonewall magazines, and the very popular vintage gay beefcake magazines. We’ve got some really deep 70s publications coming up later this week that are extra cool.

Any love you can give this series would be greatly appreciated. We’re trying to get the word out to as many people as possible about this relatively unknown, but incredibly vital segment of magazine history. Just imagine a time when magazine editors had to use fake names to avoid losing their jobs or arrest, when magazines were seized by the post office or banned, when the magazines themselves were both a threat to the existing system and an essential lifeline for the people who read them. This was magazine-making at its most important level.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. There’s images on the SPD blog and on the Newmanology Facebook page – just search for Gay Pride Month.