The 2022 project Before The Rainbow…And After brought ten older gay men in Cork together to document lives shaped by criminalisation, social hostility and profound cultural change.
Produced with Cork Gay Project, the exhibition used collage, poetic text, film, photography, costume and publication rather than relying on a single documentary form.
Nine weeks of shared creative development
The participants worked together for nine weeks to develop a visual and verbal language for their experiences. Collaborators included photographer Carolyn Collier, filmmaker Cathal MacGabhann, artist Mark Storor and creative producer Claire Ryan.
The process allowed each participant to decide how his story should be presented. Personal memory was shaped through collective discussion, but not reduced to one uniform account of gay life in Ireland.
Will Kennedy, then aged 65, described having lived through the full range of social change affecting gay men in the country. The project took place shortly before the 30th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland.
Older voices within LGBTQ+ history
Participants spoke of the group as a supportive family in which politics, personal experience and the history of the gay movement could be discussed openly.
Lindsey Walsh argued that older gay men were often overlooked and called for further projects connecting older and younger generations.
Parts of the exhibition, including a publication, visual poem and song, were also released online after the launch.
Before The Rainbow…And After did more than record social progress. It preserved the complexity of lives lived through periods of repression and change, while giving the men involved control over the images and language through which their histories entered public view.