Stonewall: The Temple
Stonewall is a temple, an astounding place even for the LGBTQ world, let alone a curious photographer heterosexual.
People who visit this bar during Gay Pride week are lots and mingle with the regulars who frequent the bars to play the “neighborhood” pool tournament.
The stories, the gender, the age are very different, but in common there is a great willingness to accept this diversity, to enjoy it.
Photos on the walls that talk about the past, in some ways remote, are in strong contrast with flowers outdoors for the massacre that a few days before had been to Orlando.
The place is not as big as the one that started the “Gay Revolution”, but retains the spirit. One of the Bartender was present in the Bar the night of June 27th,1969. He calls himself “Tree Sequoia”, and 77 years ago. He loves to entertain clients with tales and every Gay Pride many televisions are queuing up to interview him.
The bar opens at 14 and closes at night. I was there, the whole week before the parade, to photograph people and their stories, in the bottom to the room with the most beautiful light I’ve ever seen.
Hours spent talking to the people in, to listen to their story before groped to capture it with a photo.
Talk to a guy more than an hour, smoking a cigarette, drink something with him and then find out that up to one year before was a girl; meet a university professor married with children discovered by the wife watching an erotic film for homosexuals; photograph a hetero who accompanied his best friend and spend hours among families with two mothers… and see hundreds of people passing in front of the temple to pay homage to this place, this junction, which has given the world a new direction
