No one captured Greenwich Village’s heyday like Fred W. McDarrah

At the ten­der age of 13, Fred W. McDar­rah (1926 – 2007) bought his first cam­era at the 1939 New York World’s Fair for just 39 cents. It was a pre­scient moment for the Brook­lyn native, who would go on to become the first staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er and pic­ture edi­tor of the Vil­lage Voice.

An avowed pho­to­jour­nal­ist and doc­u­men­tar­i­an, McDar­rah eschewed the con­ceits of fine art, pre­fer­ring to use his posi­tion to speak truth to pow­er. He got his start chron­i­cling the Beat Gen­er­a­tion for the Voice in 1962, and soon found him­self immersed in the flour­ish­ing LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty that claimed Green­wich Vil­lage as its home. 

Dur­ing his 45 years at the Voice, McDar­rah cov­ered the city as only a news­pa­per­man could, amass­ing a sin­gu­lar archive of queer his­to­ry. The new exhi­bi­tion, Fred W. McDar­rah: Pride and Protest, brings togeth­er over 60 pho­tographs made between 1959 – 1993 that chron­i­cles the fight for lib­er­a­tion set against the back­drop of 20^th cen­tu­ry fas­cism and a glob­al pandemic. 

Pride and Protest explores McDarrah’s work at the inter­sec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty media, doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, queer cul­ture, activism, and ally­ship. Fea­tur­ing por­traits of lumi­nar­ies includ­ing James Bald­win, Mar­sha P. John­son, Andy Warhol, Can­dy Dar­ling, and Lar­ry Kramer of ACT UP, the exhi­bi­tion also includes scenes from the rev­o­lu­tion such as the 1966 ​“Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar, 1969 Stonewall Upris­ing, and first Gay Pride March the fol­low­ing year. 

• Read next: An oral his­to­ry of the Vil­lage Voice

Although mar­ried with chil­dren, McDar­rah aligned him­self with Gay Lib­er­a­tion through­out his life. Beat poet Allen Gins­berg wrote of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er: ​“Though not gay, a hard-labor­ing fam­i­ly man him­self, he’s made pho­to records of gay parades for decades – sign of a real artist’s inquis­i­tive sym­pa­thy, intel­li­gent democracy.” 

The first iter­a­tion of Pride and Protest was curat­ed for 2023 Paris Pho­to by writer Vince Alet­ti, a long­time con­trib­u­tor to the Vil­lage Voice. Orig­i­nal­ly a music jour­nal­ist who broke dis­co with his sem­i­nal col­umn in Record World mag­a­zine, Alet­ti joined the Voice where he expand­ed to the cul­ture beat. ​“The great thing about The Voice was that they allowed every­one to have their own per­son­al­i­ty,” he says of the mot­ley crew of lit­er­ary left­ists that made the paper the down­town bible. 

“Fred was very much his own man, and since he had been there from the begin­ning, he was one of the main char­ac­ters at the office,” Alet­ti con­tin­ues. ​“He was blus­tery but good humoured, and he knew what he want­ed. He wasn’t easy but he was also real­ly sup­port­ive. He was not just alert to what was going on, he was real­ly con­cerned about where soci­ety was going.” 

• Read next: In the ​’60s and ​’70s, Green­wich Vil­lage was the musi­cal heart of New York

McDar­rah embod­ied the spir­it of the Fourth Estate, of the self-appoint­ed watch­dog of democ­ra­cy who would not be tak­en in by pro­pa­gan­da and cheap the­atrics of nei­ther church, cor­po­ra­tion, nor state. ​“Fred was the back­bone of the paper, and so much of that was stand­ing up for var­i­ous caus­es and being in the very vocal minor­i­ty,” Alet­ti says. ​“He was always ready.” 

Fred W. McDar­rah: Pride and Protest is on view through July 13, 2025, at the New York His­tor­i­cal Society.

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