Katherine Lahusen

 

Katherine Lahusen, Americas first openly lesbian photojournalist. Lahusen was one of the first to report on the early days of the gay rights movement and was on the front lines long before the Stonewall riot. Her interest in photography started when she was gifted a box camera. She then went on to not only be an activist for LGBTQ+ people her whole life, but documented countless protests and the lives of many queer people during the years when the gay rights movement was first gaining traction.

Her and her life partner Barbara Gittings were both major contributors to The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the US. Gittings was an editor while Lahusen was the art editor. Katherine Lahusen contributed many photographs to the publication and helped to transition from illustrations to images of openly queer people. This helped to increase openness for these kinds of relationships.

Lahusen contributed photographs and articles to The Ladder as well as other publications such as Gay News Weekly, a gay newspaper distributed in New York city. Frequently Lahusen published under the pen name Kay Tobin, a name she found in a phone book and believed to be easier to remember than her given name.

Lahusen co-published multiple books, The Gay Crusaders and Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer.

As well as playing a pivotal role in persuading the American Psychiatric Association to remove Homosexuality from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) 

Katherine Lahusen continued her activism until she died at the age of 91. She carved the pathway for many queer activists and her work to represent a demographic that was previously ignored is still seen today in both policies and public acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.