Queer couple Neal Treadwell and Hugh Nini continue their journey to authenticate queer couples in a broad historical context with a new volume of vintage photos, Loving II, a follow-up to their groundbreaking Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s – 1950s.

In the year 2020, as the world seized up in coronavirus-induced paralysis, Neal Treadwell and his husband Hugh Nini put out a book of vintage photos that triggered a seismic shift in how many people view queer men and validated how we see ourselves. The book was called Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s – 1950s. Just as the title suggests, the book presented a collection of vintage photographs of men posing together. The mood of the pictures ranges from buddies having a good time, to best friends clearly deeply comfortable with each other, to couples bound by tender, clearly genuine love.

The success of Loving was so instantaneous that even before the book’s launch the entire first printing sold out in presales and more copies had to be produced… a lot more. Queer couples around the world saw themselves presented not in 4K high definition, but in the sepia tones and crinkled surfaces of photos that captured moments of authentic — and long-hidden — history. For allies and skeptics alike, Loving was Exhibit A in the argument that queer people are not only a normal part of human variation, but their relationships are as natural and meaningful as those of heterosexuals; moreover, queer couples have existed throughout the entirety of human history. This is something we already knew thanks to scholarly research, but the fact that same-sex male devotion was here to view in purely visual terms carried a stark, poignant power that transformed perceptions.

Significantly, Treadwell and Nini declined to make any categorical statement about the sexualities or gender identities of the men in the photos. They simply said that these were men in love — the main criterion being the looks on their faces, their attitudes toward one another, the vibe that infused the photos.

Now the couple have dipped into their vast collection (which has only grown in the intervening years) to assemble a follow-up. Loving II ( https://www.loving1000.org/ ) shows us more of the same tenderness and devotion between men of bygone eras, but it also broadens its scope: Among the images of the new collection are several photos showing trans men, and images of trans women, as well.

“[A]s with our decision not to refer to any of our subjects as gay or homosexual, only as two people in love with one another, we also don’t refer to any of our subjects as trans,” the authors explain in their preface. “These are simply people in love with one another. Those labels are for people to ascribe to themselves and not for us to ascribe to them.”

The couple go on to add: “Much like Loving, which was birthed during the dark days of a global pandemic, Loving II comes to us amid the dark days of a societal regression. In that sense, it may provide a needed respite from the gathering storm.”

Respite, indeed, as well as solace, joy, and communion. These photos communicate a simple eternal truth: Men can and do love men. Some of those loving relationships are romantic in nature. We exist, our committed relationships are real, and here are the photos that prove it.

Kilian Melloy: It’s nice to talk with you again.

Neal Treadwell: Can you believe it’s been five years?

Kilian Melloy: I cannot! Have you added quite a lot to your collection since then?

Neal Treadwell: Yeah. When we launched the first book, or put it together, we had about 2,500 photos. Now we have a little over 4,000.

Kilian Melloy: In the preface to the book, you mention how expensive vintage photos of male couples are, especially if they are in good condition. Was that always the case, or did the success of the first volume drive up the price?

Neal Treadwell: It drove up the price, because everybody wanted [a vintage photo of men in love]. Anymore, when a really superstar kind of photograph [comes] along, they could be couple hundred dollars. They could be more; there’s one in the book that we had to pay $2,000 for.

Kilian Melloy: Which photo was that?

Neal Treadwell: It’s the double page of the two guys kissing in the school yard taken to the 1920s.

Kilian Melloy: I also love the one where there’s the two guys lying on the grass and it looks like the parents of one of them are standing there, smiling.

Neal Treadwell: There was this period between the 1890s and the 1920s where there was a lot of openness and freedom and joy. The second book continues to make that case. We didn’t come up with a conclusion and then look for evidence of it; we saw this coming out organically in the collection, that during these decades it was a very different type of world — and maybe before, it just doesn’t show in the photographs. But definitely not after.

Kilian Melloy: You used photos this time that might have been considered to be of insufficient quality for the first collection – out of focus, or maybe too dark or damaged.

Hugh Nini: [There was] only one that we that we did that.

[Neal shows the photo in question]

Hugh Nini: This is the one that we added because they’re an African American couple. [Photos showing minorities] are so rare.

Neal Treadwell: And it’s a beautiful photograph. It’s just so romantic. That one would not have been included because of the resolution, because of the blurriness, but we got some criticism about the first book [not reflecting much diversity] and we put that one in the second book.

Kilian Melloy: The first volume was a revelation to many people. Do you hear from people about why you know what it said to them, how it illuminated their world?

Neal Treadwell: We do. It was [a matter of] people seeing for the first time photos that represent gay couples all the way back to the 1840s, which is when photography started. [Some people like to say] that [being queer] is a fad — it started in the ’50s or the ’60s, after Stonewall, or whatever.

Hugh Nini: This proves that there were loving couples around forever.

Kilian Melloy: There are two or three photos I thought might include trans men.

[Neal holds up four fingers]

Hugh Nini: We don’t know how they labeled themselves. I don’t think they had those labels back then. Again, we just say that it’s two men who are in love with each other. We wanted to put one of those photographs in our first book, but our publisher vetoed it. We went along because we decided that we wanted the book to have a very uncomplicated, uncluttered message, and we didn’t want to bring other things into that conversation then. The book was successful, and the message was successful, and having established that, we felt comfortable to include [a broader range of photos]. We [also] included photos that are a little bit on the frisky side.

Kilian Melloy: Netflix could make a series out of one of these photos.

[Laughter]

Neal Treadwell: Well, we have a script that we would like for them to make a movie out of.

Kilian Melloy: It sounds like this was a second chance for some of the images you didn’t put into the first book, as well as having new photos to show.

Neal Treadwell: We fought very hard for a lot of things in the first book, but we did surrender on a couple of photographs. This time around, in the kindest, most gentlest way, we said, “This is going to be our way or the highway, so get used to it.”

Kilian Melloy: With the amount of attention the first book got around the world, has anyone come up to you and said, “You know that picture? That’s my grandpa,” or, “That’s my great uncle,” or whatever?

Neal Treadwell: We thought would happen a lot. It didn’t.

Hugh Nini: We still have our fingers crossed that someone is going to say, “That’s my grandpa, and I always thought he was gay” or, you know, “I have a story for you,” and nothing’s come up yet.

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