A new exhibition titled “Out of the Closets! Into the Streets!” at New York’s Hispanic Society Museum & Library showcases photographs by Honduran-born artist Francisco Alvarado-Juárez. The images, shot on Kodachrome in 1975 and 1976, document the early Christopher Street Liberation Day Marches that followed the 1969 Stonewall uprising. The show features activists, lovers, and loners, including Sylvia Rivera, capturing a blend of protest and pageantry with sequins, feather boas, and political slogans.
The exhibition, opening May 8, matters because it preserves a pivotal moment in LGBTQIA+ history and underscores how New York’s queer activism inspired global Pride movements. Fifty years later, the photographs serve as urgent reminders of the fragility of progress and the enduring power of community pride, as encapsulated by the 1970 Liberation Day Committee’s declaration: “We are Gay and proud. No one can convince us otherwise.”