In photos: The queer ‘renegades’ who built community in 1990s San Francisco

By Suyin Haynes, CNN

(CNN) — Photographer Chloe Sherman had rarely used social media, until a chance discovery by her daughter prompted her to revisit her work documenting the queer community in 1990s San Francisco.

Sherman’s daughter, home from college in the spring of 2021, had noticed her mother’s photograph “Kindred Spirits, 1994” posted on Instagram — but without a tag or credit. “It was this moment, and her subsequent actions, that really opened the floodgates of renewed interest (in that part of my career),” Sherman told CNN in an interview.

Looking back on the image inspired Sherman to re-engage more broadly with her archives. Although she had previously exhibited some photographs from her time in San Francisco, the majority of her work, which she shot on 35-millimeter film, only existed as negatives. So, after Sherman’s daughter and a friend helped create an Instagram account for her, she began digitizing and uploading her photos onto the platform.

“I started scanning and posting, and the response was enormous… it just became this huge network of ‘90s connections and old friends,” she said. “It is a labor of love to sort through a decade of film.”

The resurrected archive has since been exhibited at San Francisco’s Schlomer Haus Gallery and F³ (Freiraum für Fotografie) in Berlin, Germany, and is now the subject of a new photography book, “Renegades: San Francisco, The 1990s.” Providing an intimate glimpse into the lives of the queer community in San Francisco’s Mission District, Sherman’s work captures what she calls a “special and unique” point in cultural history. The images in “Renegades” depict youth, joy and the era’s rebellious aesthetic, whether in raucous nights out, intense and intimate moments between couples or seemingly-spontaneous glances at the camera. “My goal was to show the beauty, even the beauty of the underbelly,” said Sherman.

The 1990s are seen as a pivotal decade for the LGBTQ community in the US, a period marked by both pain and progress. While gay rights activism gained greater attention and support, the hate crime murders of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man, in 1993 and Matthew Shepard in 1998 shook the country. In this context, San Francisco was widely seen as a safe haven, with a long history of welcoming LGBTQ people. The city was also home to the famed Castro neighborhood, which elected one of America’s first openly gay politicians, Harvey Milk, in 1977, and the annual Folsom Street Fair, born out of activism amid the AIDS crisis.

For Sherman, who had grown up making photographs and later studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, it felt important to document the moment. “We were basically playing with feminism as we knew it. We were embracing this gender-bending butch/femme culture and turning that into the forefront of our experience,” she remembered. “People were showing up and being welcomed for who they were and pushing the boundaries of anything we had known.”

Sherman herself moved to California from Portland, Oregon, in 1991, inspired by a zine cartoon she’d seen about the adventures of a San Francisco bike messenger. “I loved everything about the city,” she said. “It’s a beautiful landscape with this gorgeous backdrop. And at the same time, you get this gritty urban place that has historically welcomed the underdog.”

Sherman, who identifies as queer, instantly felt welcomed in the Mission District, a traditionally Latinx neighborhood with a well established LGBTQ community. She remembers its support for women-owned businesses including cafes, bookstores, bars, clubs and galleries, such as The Bearded Lady Cafe, a venue that features in images in “Renegades.”

“It was a very DIY time — very ‘make it work no matter what,’” she said, explaining how she and her friends would weld pothole covers together to make tables for cafes. “Most of us were in our 20s; most of us weren’t working professionals. The beauty of youth allowed for this incredible spontaneity. Community was everything and adventure was everything.”

Sherman recalls her friendships with many of the subjects of her photographs fondly. The image “Anna Joy Post Surgery at Home, 1997” depicts one such close friend lounging across her bed in a crimson dress while smoking a cigarette. “There’s an accumulation of items in that photo that are both spectacular and ironic, like the enormous ashtray filled with cigarette butts on her bed. I love that photo,” reflected Sherman.

The fact that Instagram has fueled a resurgence of interest in work created in a time before social media existed isn’t lost on Sherman. “Today we are flooded with imagery, whether that’s a good or bad thing, whether we want to see it or not, whether they’re good images or not, whether they’re real images or not,” she said. “We consume information and images at a rate we can barely process.”

Still, the response to the photos — whether from people connected to that time and community, or those completely removed from it — has been “moving and amazing,” said Sherman. As such, she sees the work as both documentary photography and an historical and political project; the community’s very existence, and Sherman’s documentation of it is inherently political, she said.

As the ’90s drew to a close, and with the advent of the dotcom boom and soaring rents, many members of her community left San Francisco — an exodus aptly referenced in the book’s final image, “Farewell Photograph, 1999,” which also features Anna Joy. Sherman herself moved away when her daughter started school, but emphasized that her relocation was more by choice than necessity. She still lives nearby, though, and maintains a deep connection with the city. “The truth is, my social life and my physical comfort zone is still — and I feel like will always be — San Francisco.”

While Sherman had stayed in touch with many friends from the Mission District, the rediscovery of her work has provided an opportunity to reconnect with others — including some of her photographs’ subjects. “Time passes and you often don’t realize how much has changed,” she said. “I remember how rich, how vast and how creative and communal of a life we had, and the life we were able to share with each other.”

And having sparked this revival of interest in her mother’s early career, Sherman’s daughter, now 22, yearns to learn more about that era. The photographer says she is more than happy to oblige. “Even for us, having lived it, it’s fun to talk about,” she said.

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