Amy

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Pride Guide '96▾ Section C

The lesbian and gay family photo album

Author Jean Swallow (seated) with Gordon Smith (top) and his San Francisco family, Peter Goetz and Kathleen Crane.

Pat Jelen

holds her son while

Kevin Sanchez gives him his first haircut.

Kerrington Osborne chases his son Alexandre at a city

park.

Making Love Visible

In Celebration of Gay and Lesbian Families

Photos by Geoff Manasse Interviews by Jean Swallow Crossing Press

Making Love Visible is a series of touching portraits, put together to foster a sense of pride in the strength and beauty of gay and lesbian families from across the United States. It contains the last work by author Jean Swallow, who took her own life in January 1995.

The book is a collaboration that combines photographs and interviews to give the reader

an intimate view of a variety of ways that lesbians and gays have created places of love and commitment. As Swallow said in the introduction, "Here for anyone who cares to see the truth are some of the families we have made, armed with only our determination and our love."

It started in 1991 early on a Saturday morning, when Seattle photographer Geoff Manasse sneaked up the stairs in a friend's house to take a special picture. The resulting photo shows a little boy cuddling in bed with his two dads as they read The Three Little Pigs.

For Manasse, it was a cutting-edge image of family life and got him thinking about others he might be able to take. Two years

later, he met Swallow. He wanted to make love visible; she would join him to give that love its voice.

Within two weeks, they had planned the cross-country trip that would make the volume become a reality. More than 150 people are pictured in the book, in Manasse's unforgettable, intimate black and white portraits. All are originals, happily and defiantly describing themselves as a family.

We meet Champagne, a Portland, Oregon drag queen as she confronts Christian fundamentalists. We glimpse a family of six adults, raising a two-year-old boy while helping one of the family to die of AIDS, at home where he belongs. We evisit the story of Sharon Kowalski, who fought for eight years for the

right to care for her injured lover Karen Thompson.

"Jean turned every interview into a soulful exchange," says Manasse of his collaborator. "She wanted the book to be a healing document." Ironically, before the project was over, Swallow, who suffered from depression, died of a deliberate aspirin overdose. Her eulogy is published at the book's end.

Gay and lesbian readers will be proud to find a little bit of home in Making Love Visible. Supporters will find insight; detractors will be educated. Everyone's heart will be warmed by the hospitality of these families and the loving attention of the team that created this record.