Love Is (Hate)
Love between men was once explicitly outlawed, turned into a crime rather than a human need—and its echoes still linger beneath today’s easy slogans and rainbow affirmations. This piece overlays the original rainbow colours of the pride flag onto a vintage photograph of two men touching yet unable to meet each other’s eyes, their connection shadowed by constraint. The phrase Love Is remains deliberately unfinished, with the faint, almost hidden word HATE stitched beneath the surface, hinting at how prejudice, fear, and disgust can persist quietly beneath declarations of acceptance. The work sits between tenderness and threat, asking what it means to love when the legacy of homophobia is still felt in the body.
The models are Pat Burnham and Kenny Owens, photographed by the Western Photography Guild. Gilbert Baker created the rainbow flag, as it was originally called, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade; the eight-stripe version debuted on June 25, 1978.
