As part of my first research trip to the United States I visited a number of archives in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Historical/archival research is a key aspect of the project Media Amateurs in Gay Culture: in order to formulate theories on the media history of self-staging by gay men we first of all have to access relevant self-narratives. Whereas nowadays self-images can be quickly and easily accessed via YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, or by using the smartphone technology that is becoming an increasingly important and integral part of people’s personal lives, the material required for an historical perspective can often only be obtained through painstaking research and analysis.

The project team behind Media Amateurs in Gay Culture cooperates with colleagues from the project anders fühlen, part of the Research Center for the History of Emotions,which is headed by Prof. Dr. Ute Frevert at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPIB) in Berlin.

First workshop of the DFG research project Media Amateurs in Gay Culture. The Photographic Self-representation of Men in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

The project team behind Media Amateurs in Gay Culture cooperates with colleagues from the research project “AMATEUR FILM ARCHEOLOGY. Excavations in modern visual culture”, which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

   

The following observations are based on the first impressions and materials gathered by Susanne Regener on her visit to Los Angeles and San Francisco, which was made in preparation for the research trip to the United States in 2011.