Diana Solis, a photojournalist and artist from Pilsen, photographed her friends whether they were lying in bed or taking part in revolutionary LGBTQ+ demonstrations in Chicago and Mexico City.
Some of the photos have been hanging on the walls of the Chicago Cultural Center since the spring as part of “Images to Construct,” an exhibit capturing moments in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement from the 1970s to the 1990s. The exhibit runs through Aug. 4.
“I didn’t realize at the time that I was immortalizing things,” Solis, 68, told the Sun-Times.
On Friday, she personally guided graduates of the LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project through exhibits showcasing the history lived by older generations and the foundations of younger generations, building bridges between generations in the community.
“The dialogue project is very important because it brings different generations together to support each other,” Solis said.
The project is a partnership between the Center on Halsted Senior Services Center, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. It aims to connect young queer people with their elders to preserve their shared history.
“We really need this unity and communication,” she says. “No matter what age you are, it helps you get through life.”
The exhibition will feature not only Solís’s work, but also that of many of her contemporaries.
Laura Flash captured scenes of queer intimacy and the AIDS epidemic while doctoring her photographs to conceal her identity, and Joan E. Billen, known as JEB, toured the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s with her slide presentation The Dyke Show, which presented a century of photography from a “lesbian feminist perspective.”
Laura Frush’s photographs are on display in the exhibition “Images on Which to Build.” Frush edited the photos to conceal the identities of her LGBTQ+ subjects.
Solis said the exhibit reunited intergenerational groups, giving them “a sense that we need to be together” and serving as a reminder of what can be accomplished by uniting a broad range of people in the LGBTQ+ community.
After leading the tour, Solis stopped to take portraits with them, adding a touch of class to her work, including the group and the bond they formed.
Molly Frupp, 25, a graduate research assistant for the Dialogue Project and currently a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, took some time during the shoot to take some photos of themselves as well.
Fulop said she decided to pursue an academic path studying queer art and history after seeing exhibitions similar to the one she toured Friday.
“This is what we’re fighting for,” Frupp says. “This is an opportunity to add to the archives, to build on the history, so that in 20 or 30 years we can have exhibitions like this and share our own photos that say, ‘We were here, and we were queer.'”
Diana Solis has been photographing the community for decades and has returned to Pilsen as her subject during the pandemic.
Solis has been capturing communities with her camera for decades, and returned to photography during the pandemic to see the condition of the neighborhood she grew up in. Capturing communities in her work is important, she said, not only as a way to represent their struggles, but also to educate others while humanizing them.
We need art like this, she said.
“I’ve always had this fear in the back of my mind because we face this fear and prejudice every day,” Solis said. “Today, more than ever, we need to come together and educate as much as we can. … Photography and other arts create a way for people to make a difference in their lives.”
Phyllis Johnson, 73, was struck by the quirkiness of the artwork and was amazed that the posters on display were from a friends’ art collective.
Phyllis Johnson, a 73-year-old Roseland resident and member of the dialogue group, was excited to see in the exhibit a poster for Amigas Latinas, a queer advocacy group founded by some of Johnson’s friends.
But it was the celebration of queerness in the arts that moved her most.
She said she still feels hesitant to talk about her sexuality, but here, “there’s nothing to hide.”
“It’s such an affirming feeling to walk here,” said Johnson, who serves on the Illinois LGBTQ Commission on Aging. “Society has always suppressed that recognition for me, so to be in a place that celebrates it, it’s just like, … It doesn’t have to be a secret.”
