In January 2023, Donna Gottschalk met Hélène Giannecchini for the first time. Although they were separated by some forty years, they developed a closed bond. In search of images for her forthcoming book on friendship, Hélène explores Donna’s archives and collects her words, her story. Deeply moved by Donna’s life and photographs, Hélène set out to echo them.
Donna Gottschalk’s work paints a social, political and intimate portrait of an invisible America, from the late 1960s to the 1980s. As a member of the queer community herself, and involved in the early lesbian rights movement, Donna focused on photographing people on the margins of society, with whom she lived, campaigned and worked: her relatives, friends, lovers and comrades in struggle. Her favorite mode of expression is the portrait, which she strives to capture without artifice. The people she photographs pose for her in an intimate setting, most often in her apartment, fully embracing their freedom. With a sensitive, committed and non-judgmental eye, Donna gradually builds up a family album, a collective memory.
Throughout the book, a text by Hélène Giannecchini activates, reveals and extends Donna Gottschalk’s images. An essay by Julie Héraut, co-curator of the exhibition, entitled “Archive against oblivion,” looks back at the careers of the two women and the genesis of this four-handed project.
In “Being seen. On Donna, visibility, and me,” African-American photographer and art historian Carla Williams draws a parallel between her photographic practice and Donna’s, a few decades apart. A selection of archives completes the picture.
