Monday 28 September 2009

Gay Icons



Whenever I'm in London (which is admittedly rarely) I always seem to end up at the National Portrait Gallery. It's free, near Trafalgar Square and it's got some cracking stuff in it. On Saturday I went and had a look round the current 'Gay Icons' exhibition.

The premise: ten prominent gay figures of modern society each choose six people who is an icon to them. The exhibition comprised of photographs of the icons along with why they were chosen. The selectors included Ian McKellen, Sandy Toksvig and Elton John.

The selections brought up some fascinating figures – male, female, some gay, some not but all interesting.

Some were well known (like John Lennon and Nelson Mandella), some were not so (like 20th century novelist Ronald Firbank), some were clichéd (Village People, Quentin Crisp) and some were just bizarre (football manager Graham Taylor?).

Here's one of my favourites:

Peter Tatchell, a human rights and gay rights activist, made headlines in 1999 and again in 2001 when he attempted to put Robert Mugabe under citizen's arrest. I think that really does make him an icon.

The exhibition really was put together well, with it's stylish purple and grey backdrop. If I had a criticism, it would be that some of the photographs of the icons weren't fantastic (some were just taken from stock image libraries). However, the exhibition wasn't solely about that, it was about bringing the identities of some great figures to the fore, and it did that very well.

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