(Divine, The Palace Theater, S.F., 1972)

In the fall of 1969, a few months after the Stonewall Riots, Anthony Friedkin, a 19-year-old Los Angeles photographer, returned to his hometown from a summer in Europe and embarked on an extraordinary four-year project: The Gay Essay, a series of black-and-white photographs depicting members of what was not then a high-profile or even cohesive group—gay men, drag queens, Hollywood hustlers and lesbians.