The film Milk was released at a very poignant time – California had just passed, inexplicably, Proposition 8, which effectively banned gay marriage in this state.  Now as states all along the Eastern seaboard are one by one opening their minds and legalizing gay marriage, the current exhibit at Overtones Gallery in Venice opens at a significant time as well.  The exhibit marks the Los Angeles debut of Daniel Nicoletta’s solo show, Harvey Milk and the San Francisco Scene, with photographs of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement as started by Harvey Milk in San Francisco.  Nicoletta was a young employee of Castro Camera, Harvey Milk’s camera shop in the center of the growing gay neighborhood in San Francisco in the mid-1970s – the Castro District.  Being an employee there meant believing in Milk’s work and stopping at nothing to see him elected as city supervisor, which – if Mr. Milk’s campaign was before your time and you haven’t seen the movie – he did and he became the first openly gay elected official.  

Nicoletta’s photographs are a sweeping look at not only the days of Milk in San Francisco, but also of the days of Gus Van Sant filming Milk in San Francisco.  His older photos depict Harvey Milk as this sweet, good-natured man trying to show the world that being gay and using words like “fabulous” and “fierce” should be accepted rather than oppressed.  He was telling us all something (even those of us born after 1970): that oppression of true feelings has never actually resulted in a positive, open-minded result.  I like to think that, were he alive to witness the 2008 elections in California, he’d have been on top of that milk crate talking into a blow horn and giving us hope.  

Harvey Milk and the San Francisco Scene is on view at the Overtones Gallery in Venice now through June 20, 2009.  Please visit their website or call (310) 915-0346 for more information.