An intimate window into New York’s ’70s lesbian scene

While writing her new book, An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail(Fitzcarraldo Editions), French art historian Hélène Giannecchini began searching for pictures of friendship made by a queer artists, but found the canon falling short until a friend introduced her to the work of American photographer Donna Gottschalk. 

Born in 1949, Gottschalk was raised on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Her mother operated a beauty salon; her father was a merchant marine kept from the home owing to physical abuse. For Gottschalk, family was found in community as a young lesbian activist alongside her sister Myla, a trans woman. They joined the Gay Liberation Movement, and Gottschalk designed the legendary ​“Lavender Menace” t‑shirt worn in protests of the National Organization for Women’s homophobia. 

Gottschalk took up photography at age 17, chronicling the world in which she has lived and amassing a singular archive of queer history as told from the inside looking out. Looking at her work, Giannecchini recognised a parallel universe unfolding before her eyes. She contacted Gottschalk and received an invitation to meet at the artist’s home on a small farm in Vermont in January 2023. 

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“I’m a lesbian, and Donna didn’t have to explain a lot of things to me because I understand what she went through,” Giannecchini says. ​“We built trust very quickly. She told me she was shy, but she was ready to tell the story in the pictures. With Donna, you feel she loves these people and feels very close to them because she belongs to the same world. She’s not looking from the outside; she’s inside with them and wants her loved ones to be remembered.” 

They spent a snowy weekend in the archive, looking at photographs, sharing stories, and building trust that would form the basis for their magnificent collaboration, We Others: Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini, on view at The Photographers’ Gallery in London through June 7. The exhibition pairs Gottschalk’s intimate portraits with Giannecchini’s tender histories, restoring this invaluable chapter of queer history to its rightful place. 

Long before family photography was recognised by the establishment, Gottschalk photographed her queer comrades and friends with the same devotion she brought to chronicling the lives of her siblings Diane, Mary, Myla, and Vincent. Entrusted with the personal histories of these photographs, Giannecchini crafts tender coming of age stories of the people who formed the foundation of Gottschalk’s chosen family. 

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“Donna remembers the names of everyone in the group that gravitated to her 9^th Street apartment. I intoned the names with her: ​‘Sally, Oak, Billie, Binky, Chris, Jill, Marlene, Lynn, Sharon, Joan, Nancy, Suzy,’” Giannecchini writes in ​“Alphabet City,” a return to the apartment where 18-year-old Gottschalk lived in 1967. The working class landscape of her youth had vanished, and with it the world she once knew, where she could make rent working a series of part time jobs including cashier, waitress at a diner, art model, and even Central Park carriage driver while studying at the Cooper Union. 

Six decades after these images were made, the story of We Others can now be told in full. ​“It’s more than a collaboration, Donna is now part of my chosen family. I really feel close to her,” says Giannecchini. ​“Donna is a survivor. She is the living memory of these people. It’s a life commitment for me.” 

We Others: Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini is on view through June 7, 2026, at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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