How Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell collected a wealth of early vernacular photos of men in love

20 years ago, on an ordinary Sunday, Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell visited a local antique mall where they had been many times before. While browsing, Treadwell spotted a box full of old photographs and, leafing through, he found a snapshot of two men in a romantic embrace, dated 1927. “At the time, we were both shocked that the photo had never been taken,” says Nini, a former director of the ballet academy, “much less survived 73 years to end up in our hands, in Dallas, Texas.” The couple thought they would never find another old photo of men in love.

And then they did, almost a year later. “When we found the first one, we didn’t expect there to be a second one,” says Nini. They have since found photographs of male couples in formats dating back to the early days of the medium – daguerreotypes, glass negatives, cabinet cards, tintypes and photo booth snapshots – at flea markets, estate sales and online marketplaces. , all taken at a time when even-sex marriage was illegal. It was only after collecting around 300 photographs that Nini and Treadwell realized it was a collection. It now has more than 4,000 vernacular photos dating from the 1850s to 1950s, from 36 different countries.

The exhibition To love each other: They love each other(until September 24) at the Museum of Art and History (MAH) in Geneva, Switzerland, is publicly presenting a selection of 400 images from their treasure. Inspired by the book on their collection published in 2020 (To love: a photographic history of men in love 1850-1950Five Continents Editions), the exhibition contains almost all of the photographs from the book plus 80 that Nini and Treadwell collected after its release.

“In these images, it’s fantastic how many different stories he could activate,” says MAH director Marc-Olivier Wahler of Magnet as a whole, as well as a 1951 photograph of two soldiers seated on a bench. “You wonder, they are in the army and are they really together? Then suddenly you see the matted feet. And all these possible stories – what happened to them, what happened to this photograph? Where was it found? It’s endless.

Magnet also includes recently commissioned artwork by Swiss photographer Walter Pfeiffer, known for his playful erotic portraits of male models. Pfeiffer chose snapshots from Nini and Treadwell’s collection, then colored and enlarged them, layering a contemporary filter over the vintage images. Two rare black and white videos by conceptual artist Urs Lüthi will also be screened with the exhibition.

Unlike these two established Swiss artists, most of the photographers and models in the photographs are anonymous. An outlier is an early 20th century portrait believed to be of Bloomsbury Circle artist Duncan Grant and poet Rupert Brooke. Otherwise, the men in the photographs are not named.

Apart from a few photo booth shots (generated by a machine) and a first selfie of a couple in a mirror, the authors of the images are also unknown. With many of the photographs in the collection taken in an era before home cameras were readily available, it is understood the couples used photographers they felt comfortable approaching to help produce a visual testimony of their romantic relationships. Few 19th-century photographers are known to have taken portraits of same-sex couples, including New York-based Alice Austen. This collection proves that there were many more uncredited.

As private collectors, Nini and Treadwell had the freedom to preserve something outside of the institutional mainstream and to inspire new research. “We felt [it] was our obligation to keep these photographs. To protect them,” says Treadwell, who works in the cosmetics industry. “Our goal is to continue to have museum exhibits wherever we can that will propel us to tell this story and share the story that love is love. Love has been around forever.”

• To love each other: They love each otheruntil September 24, Museum of Art and History, Geneva, Switzerland