Daniel Nicoletta (born December 23, 1954) is an Italian-American photographer, photojournalist and gay rights activist. [1]
Daniel Nicoletta (born December 23, 1954) is an Italian-American photographer, photojournalist and gay rights activist. [1]
Daniel Nicoletta was born in New York City and raised in Utica, New York. In his late teens he left New York to attend San Francisco State University, later graduating from the bachelor of arts program. He started his photographic career in 1975 as an intern to Crawford Barton, who was then a staff photographer for the national gay magazine The Advocate . [2]
In 1974, when he was 19, Nicoletta first met Harvey Milk and Scott Smith at Castro Camera, their camera store on Castro Street; the following year, they hired him to work at the shop. [3] [4] The three became friends, and Nicoletta worked with Milk on his campaigns for political office. During this period of time, Nicoletta took many now well-known photographs of Milk. When Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he became California's first openly gay elected official; he served for almost eleven months before he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White at City Hall on November 27, 1978.
After Milk's death, Nicoletta worked to keep his memory alive. He was the installation coordinator of the Harvey Milk photographic tribute plaques installed at Harvey Milk Plaza and at the Castro Street Station, [4] which featured his photographs as well as those of Marc Cohen, Don Eckert, Jerry Pritikin, Efren Ramirez, Rink, and Leland Toy. He was co-chair of the Harvey Milk City Hall Memorial Committee, and his photograph served as the basis for the bust of Milk that now resides in the rotunda of San Francisco's City Hall. [5]
Nicoletta was one of the founders of the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, now known as the Frameline Film Festival. In 1977, while still working at Harvey Milk's photography shop, Nicoletta, along with David Waggoner, [6] Marc Huestis, [7] and others, began film screenings of their Super 8 films, called the Gay Film Festival of Super 8 Films, which evolved into the yearly festival.
From 1990 to 2000, Nicoletta maintained a photography studio in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The studio provided him a setting for work focused on artistic portraits of queer personalities, community leaders, performers and colorful urban characters. It also served as a cultural and social center where Nicoletta organized parties, salons, memorial services and other events. [8]
Nicoletta's work has documented queer culture from the mid-1970s into the 2000s. In addition to his historic images of Harvey Milk, his subjects include the White Night riots, the Castro Street Fair, the San Francisco Pride Parade, The Cockettes, and the Angels of Light, as well as personalities such as Justin Bond, Loren Cameron, Divine, Mark Ewert, Ruth Weiss, [9] Allen Ginsberg, Harry Hay, G.B. Jones, and Sylvester. He also has served as a set photographer for several films, including Vegas in Space (1992), Milk (2008) and All About Evil (2010). [10] [11]
Since the late 1970s, Nicoletta's photographs have been widely reproduced in periodicals, including The Advocate, the Bay Area Reporter, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice and X-tra West (Canada). [11]
His work has appeared in numerous books, including Randy Shilts' The Mayor of Castro Street (1982); Ruth Silverman's San Francisco Observed: A Photographic Record (1986); Beth Schneider and Nancy E. Stoller's Women Resisting AIDS: Feminist Strategies of Empowerment (1995) (cover photo); Jim Van Buskirk and Susan Stryker's Gay by the Bay: A Pictorial History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (1996); David A. Sprigle's Beasts: FotoFactory Anthology II (1997); Strange de Jim's San Francisco's Castro (2003); David Gere's How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS (2004); Joshua Gamson's The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco (2006); Dustin Lance Black and Armistead Maupin's MILK: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk (2009); and Chris March's I Heart Chris March (2010) (cover photo). [11] [12]
Harvey Milk "Forever Stamp," issued May 22, 2014. The stamp art centers on a photo of Milk taken in front of his camera store in San Francisco. The colors of the gay pride flag appear in a vertical strip in the top left corner.
Nicoletta's photographs have been featured in a number of documentary films. His images of Harvey Milk appear prominently in the 1985 Academy Award winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk , directed by Rob Epstein. His work also appears in the 1993 Marc Huestis film Sex Is....
The photographic work of Daniel Nicoletta has been shown in one-artist exhibitions at Josie's Cabaret (San Francisco, 1994); Levi-Strauss Corporate Headquarters (San Francisco, 1996); Overtones Gallery (Los Angeles, 2009); and Electric Works (San Francisco, 2010). [11]
In addition, his prints have appeared in numerous group shows in the United States, including "AIDS: The Artists' Response," Hoyt L. Sherman Gallery, Ohio State University (April 1989); "Group Work: AIDS Timeline", Whitney Biennial (April 1991); "Harvey Milk: Second Sight," San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (October–November 1998); "Out of the Closet," Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco (May–June 2000); "Made in California," Los Angeles County Museum of Art (October 2000–February 2001); "An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area, Part 1," San Francisco Camerawork (September–October 2009); and "Life and Death in Black and White: AIDS Direct Action in San Francisco, 1985–1990," the GLBT History Museum, San Francisco (March–June 2012). [11] [13]
His work was featured in the 1997 exhibition "Goodbye to Berlin: 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung," organized by the Schwules Museum at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. [11]
Nicoletta's work is represented in the permanent collections of the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library; [14] the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; the Wallach Collection of Fine Prints and the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library; the Schwules Museum in Berlin, Germany; and the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. [15]
In the feature film Milk , a biographical film based on the life of Harvey Milk directed by Gus Van Sant, Daniel Nicoletta is played by Lucas Grabeel. Nicoletta plays Carl Carlson and served as the still photographer on the film. [16]
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York, where he acknowledged his homosexuality as an adolescent, but chose to pursue sexual relationships with secrecy and discretion well into his adult years. His experience in the counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and the expression of sexuality.
The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The venue became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California during that period. The theater has more than 1,400 seats.
The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of a lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and of Harvey Milk, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. The events took place on the night of May 21, 1979, in San Francisco. Earlier that day White had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible conviction for his actions. The lesser conviction outraged the city's gay community, setting off the most violent reaction by gay Americans since the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.
Randy Shilts was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Crawford Barton was an American photographer. His work is known for documenting the blooming of the openly gay culture in San Francisco from the late 1960s into the 1980s.
The Times of Harvey Milk is a 1984 American documentary film that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein, produced by Richard Schmiechen, and narrated by Harvey Fierstein, with an original score by Mark Isham.
Cleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2020. In 1983 at the onset of the AIDS pandemic, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which has grown into one of the largest and most influential advocacy organizations empowering people with AIDS in the United States.
The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (SFGMC) is the world's first openly gay chorus, one of the world's largest male choruses and the group most often credited with creating the LGBT choral movement.
Milk is a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, the film stars Sean Penn as Milk, Josh Brolin as Dan White, a city supervisor, and Victor Garber as San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California.
Henry "Hank" Wilson was a longtime San Francisco LGBT rights activist and long term AIDS activist and survivor. The Bay Area Reporter noted that "over more than 30 years, he played a pivotal role in San Francisco's LGBT history." He grew up in Sacramento, and graduated with a B.A. in education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1971.
Castro Camera was a camera store in the Castro District of San Francisco, California, operated by Harvey Milk from 1972 until his assassination in 1978. During the 1970s the store became the center of the neighborhood's growing gay community, as well as campaign headquarters for Milk's various campaigns for elected office.
Joseph Scott Smith was a gay rights activist best known for his romantic relationship with Harvey Milk, for whom he was a campaign manager.
Anne Kronenberg is an American political administrator and LGBT rights activist. She is best known for being Harvey Milk's campaign manager during his historic San Francisco Board of Supervisors campaign in 1977 and his aide as he held that office until he and mayor George Moscone were assassinated. As an openly lesbian political activist, Kronenberg was noted for her instrumental role in the gay rights movement, both for Milk's campaign and in her own right.
Marc Huestis is an American filmmaker, camp impresario and social activist. He is best known for his motion picture Sex Is... and his in-person tributes/benefit events feting celebrities from Hollywood's Golden Age and cult personas at San Francisco's Castro Theatre.
Jon Reed Sims, was an American choir conductor born in Smith Center, Kansas.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood through the 1960s and 1970s, the Castro remains one of the most prominent symbols of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism and events in the world.
Richard William Paul Pabich was an American gay rights activist best known for his role as a campaign manager and friend to Harvey Milk.
The Castro Sweep is a police riot that occurred in the Castro District of San Francisco on the evening of October 6, 1989. The riot, by about 200 members of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), followed a protest held by ACT UP, a militant direct action group responding to the concerns of people with AIDS.
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