Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell share more of their photographs of men in love

Hi, I’m Jerry Portwood, the host of The Queer Love Podcast, and I had two very special guests joining me for our latest episode.If you aren’t aware of the photo book Loving, it was published in 2020 amid the pandemic. It’s subtitled “a photographic history of men in love” and shows hundreds of men from the 1850s to 1950s in various situations: 19th-century working-class guys, fashionably dressed businessmen, farmers, university students, WWII soldiers and sailors, and many more men in romantic settings: at the beach, outdoors with friends, under umbrellas, dancing in groups and staged with props.Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell began collecting vintage vernacular photographs 25 years ago and now have amassed over 4,000. You can read more about how they got started—and even watch a cute short film—on their site if you’re curious to understand their collecting origin story.I am so happy that they joined me on the podcast to talk about their collection and the forthcoming second edition, Loving II, which features 300 photos for people to enjoy and will be available October 14. I wrote about the first book when I was an editor at Rolling Stone because the book impressed me with its scope and moving content. In that piece, I quoted Bruce Hainley, who wrote in relation to Sam Wagstaff—who was a great collector of photography (and was the lover and benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe)—because he acknowledged “collecting as an erotic drive akin to the size queen’s,” adding that it also reveals the inextricable “link between gay desire and the interminable pleasure of the gaze. I’m not sure which of the two came first.”While we didn’t get into that impulse directly, I did ask Hugh and Neal—who have been a couple for over three decades—about how they met and continue to make their relationship work after all of these years. Turns out they met at a bar in 1992 and it’s a super cute story, so you don’t want to miss it. I also wanted to know if they had dreamed about the men in the photos (or had nightmares), and it turns out they’ve written a screenplay about one of the couples who are featured in several of the photographs in their collection. Plus, we talked about the new photos in the book, including two very special ones that also feature the “verso,” or reverse side of the photo and the inscriptions.One photo in particular got me choked up, and I think a great many people will also have emotional reactions when they see it. The snapshot shows a young man and smiling little toddler being pushed in a wheelbarrow with a farmhouse in the background. On the reverse side, the photo reads: “My boy friend pushing Shirley and I in the wheelbarrow — some picture.”Wow!I hope you enjoy this special episode. And if you want to listen to it via your favorite podcast platform, you can subscribe to The Queer Love Podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you’ll never miss an episode.And if you don’t already have a copy, you can also still buy the first Loving book! Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe