The groundbreaking exhibition Queer Lens: A History of Photography is currently on view at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles from June 17th to September 28th, 2025. This landmark show at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles is the first major U.S. exhibition to explore photography’s role in shaping queer identity. Featuring over 270 works—from vintage prints to rare ephemera—the Getty Museum in Los Angeles offers visitors a profound journey through LGBTQ+ history captured on film.
Curated by Paul Martineau, Queer Lens spans eight thematic chapters that trace how photography has both documented and shaped queer lives from the 19th century through today. Paul Martineau’s curatorial vision brings to light moments such as the Pansy Craze of the 1920s, revealing drag culture and underground nightlife scenes. Another powerful chapter, Hiding in Plain Sight, presents mid-century Polaroids that provided private glimpses into queer life during harsh repression.
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles highlights the resilience of queer communities through the 1980s AIDS crisis, showcasing activist photography and the rise of ACT UP, underscoring the ongoing fight for visibility and rights. Getty Museum Director Timothy Potts stresses that the exhibition offers overdue recognition of marginalized queer narratives within art history.
Presented in both English and Spanish, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles embraces “queer” as an empowering term of inclusion. Accompanying the exhibition, Paul Martineau co-authored a companion book with Ryan Linkof, further deepening the conversation around queer photography. Through this exhibition, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles reinforces photography’s unique power to shape community and identity—past, present, and future.
Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, aka Fanny and Stella, about 1870
Reproduced by courtesy of Essex Record Office, D/F 269/1/3712
Alexander McQueen, Fashion designer, 2009; printed 2021; Inkjet print
Image: 62 × 48.6 cm (24 7/16 × 19 1/8 in.)
Sheet: 86.2 × 60.8 cm (33 15/16 × 23 15/16 in.) Getty Museum
Courtesy of TIM WALKER
2021.80.3
Angela Scheirl [now A. Hans Scheirl], 1993; Silver-dye bleach print
Image: 49.1 × 38.1 cm (19 5⁄16 × 15 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of HELEN KORNBLUM in honor of ROXANA MARCOCI
© CATHERINE OPIE, Courtesy of REGEN PROJECTS, Los Angeles, Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London and Naples
EX.2025.5.192
Jose in Front of Laundromat, Lynwood, CA,from the series Queer Brown Ranchero, 2017; Inkjet print
Image: 50.8 × 40.6 cm (20 × 16 in.) Getty Museum
Courtesy of FABIAN GUERRERO; 2025.15
Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, Curator; Photographer, 1974; Gelatin silver print
Image: 27.3 × 34.7 cm (10 3/4 × 13 11/16 in.)
Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Courtesy of INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY and FRANCESCO SCAVULLO TRUST BENEFICIARIES
2012.11.2
Colette, Writer, 1930; Gelatin silver print
Image: 19.8 × 24.7 cm (7 3/4 × 9 3/4 in.) Getty Museum
Courtesy of ESTATE OF ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ; 84.XM.193.10