From the Marches to the Altar: My Life Inside the Marriage Equality Movement

I remember exactly where I was on both nights.

The first time was at a cabaret show in Manhattan. Three gay men on a small stage, singing about love and longing, when the alert came through. The vote had passed. Marriage equality was now legal in New York State. The audience found out together — and nobody quite knew how to respond at first. Then someone cheered. And then everyone was cheering. And then everyone was crying.

I was there with my husband — not yet legally my husband, but my husband in every way that mattered. We looked at each other for a long moment. We both understood that something had just changed. And then we kissed, and held each other, and didn't let go for a while.

But I hadn't just shown up on that night. I had been showing up for years.

I started volunteering with Marriage Equality New York — which later became Marriage Equality USA — in 2004. I photographed their protests and their fundraisers, their marches and their moments of frustration and hope. I provided images for their campaigns because I believed in what they were doing and because I had personal reasons to.

My first husband died of HIV before any of this was possible. We had been together for years. I was his primary caregiver. And when he died, I discovered what it meant to lose a partner without the legal protections that marriage provides. The indignities that follow — the paperwork, the assumptions, the way the world treats you as though the relationship never quite counted — stayed with me. They still do.

Among the people I photographed during those years was Edie Windsor — the woman whose Supreme Court case ultimately led to the federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Having her image in my archive feels like holding a small piece of history.

The law passed on June 24th. It took effect on July 24th — a Sunday. The Manhattan Marriage Bureau, which is normally closed on Sundays, opened its doors for the occasion. Judges from across the city volunteered their time to perform ceremonies all day long.

I wasn't hired. Nobody called me. I just went, with my camera, because I knew what I would find there.

I found hundreds of couples lined up around the block. Some had been together for decades. Some were elderly. Some were crying before the ceremony even began. All of them had waited — some for years, some for their entire adult lives — for this specific legal right that most people take completely for granted.

I offered my services to anyone who wanted them. For free. No strings. It was the least I could do.

I captured portraits of dozens of couples and photographed eight weddings that day. Eight. In one day. Each one different, each one carrying the full weight of everything that had led to that moment. I've photographed close to a thousand couples since then, and I still think about that day.

Four years later, on June 26th, 2015, the Supreme Court made it the law of the land.

I was on a boat to Fire Island when the ruling came through. A group of us had been following the news anxiously, braced for disappointment the way you brace yourself when you've been disappointed before. Nobody wanted to hope too hard. We had learned not to.

But the news was good. Better than good.

We got on the ferry with limited marriage rights and arrived on Fire Island with full marriage rights. It was surreal. Quiet at first — the kind of quiet that happens when something you've wanted for so long finally arrives and you don't quite know what to do with it. And then not quiet at all.

The phone started ringing almost immediately after the New York ruling, and I think I understood why.

I was one of the only photographers anywhere with same-sex couples front and center on my website. I had already photographed commitment ceremonies — unions that were meaningful in every human sense even if the law hadn't caught up yet — and I had put those images where everyone could see them, right alongside my straight couples. No separate site. No different name. No hedging.

This was not the norm. Many photographers who had those images hid them — creating separate websites under different names because they feared a backlash from straight clients. I understood that fear. I just couldn't do it. These couples deserved to be treated as equal in my marketing because they were equal. Full stop. And I think potential clients noticed.

They came from all over. Couples from states where it still wasn't legal, making the trip to New York City specifically to get married here. Many of them were nervous in a way that broke my heart a little. Reticent about holding hands in public, hesitant to kiss for the camera, so accustomed to hiding that the simple act of being visible felt dangerous even on their wedding day.

And then a New Yorker would walk by.

It happened almost every single time. A stranger on the street would see what was happening, two people, clearly just married, clearly in love, and they would stop. They would cheer. They would applaud. They would blow kisses. New York City opened its arms to these couples in a way that thrilled me every single time I witnessed it.

One afternoon I was with two men who had just gotten married, shooting portraits on the street, when an elderly woman stopped us. She asked if she could give something to the couple. They said yes. And she sang "At Last" for them, right there on the sidewalk.

We all cried. Happy tears. One of my favorite memories in 25 years of doing this work.

After the national ruling in 2015, the inquiries came from even further afield — from countries where marriage equality was still years away, from places where being openly gay carried real risk. I've photographed couples from all over the world because of it. People who came to New York City specifically because here, for a few days, they could be fully themselves.

That is a privilege I don't take lightly.

My work with the LGBTQ+ community has never been limited to weddings.

For over a decade I covered New York City's official Pride events for Heritage of Pride, whose annual march is one of the largest in the world. My work has been prominently featured in their publications in print and online, and I've been hired to shoot specifically for their merchandise and marketing campaigns. The march itself is massive, joyful, and relentless — it goes on for ten hours or more, and covering it properly means being on your feet and moving for every one of those hours. By the time I turned 60, the thought of ten hours running after floats while carrying twenty pounds of equipment and doing deep knee bends had lost some of its luster. These days I focus my energy on the crowds who gather to watch and celebrate. The few hours before sunset at Hudson River Park have become my favorite spot — the marchers have finished and gathered together, the energy is joyful and relaxed, and knowing how to work with dramatic directional sunset light is exactly the kind of skill that turns a beautiful moment into an extraordinary photograph.

The NYC Drag March, which takes place the Friday before Pride Sunday, has become one of my favorite events of the entire year. Drag performers and their community gather in Tompkins Square Park for an hour or two before the march begins, and that's where I do most of my work, making portraits of some of the most visually extraordinary people you will ever encounter in New York City. I usually stay through the end of the march at the Stonewall Inn for some post-march celebration photos as well. Raw, joyful, defiant, beautiful — and considerably easier on my knees than ten hours behind a float.

But the Drag March is just one of many community events I cover throughout the year. I photograph the Folsom Street East festival and the Brooklyn Pride march, and have been expanding my coverage to Pride celebrations in other boroughs as well. New York's LGBTQ+ community has never been confined to one neighborhood or one day, and neither is my coverage of it.

I've done portrait work for the Imperial Court of New York — one of the oldest LGBTQ+ charitable organizations in the city, whose members raise money for community causes through the art of drag. The portraits I've made for them are some of my most creative and technically demanding work. These are people who understand costume, character, and presence in a way that makes them extraordinary photographic subjects.

I've photographed proposals and engagements, elopements and celebrations, families and individuals. I've worked with lesbian couples, gay couples, bisexual clients, transgender clients, and non-binary clients. I've photographed people at every stage of their journey — some out and proud for decades, some taking their first tentative steps into visibility, some simply wanting beautiful images of themselves and their lives.

Every single one of them has been an honor.

The LGBTQ+ community has given me more than I can adequately express — extraordinary images, profound human moments, and a reminder of what it looks like when people fight for the right to simply be themselves. I've been fighting alongside them, in my own way, for most of my adult life.

I am a gay man who has spent 25 years photographing this community. I was there before it was legal. I was there the night it became legal in New York, holding my husband — not yet legally my husband — while a room full of people cried happy tears around us. I was on a boat when it became legal everywhere, not quite believing it was real.

I have photographed couples who waited decades for this moment. I have photographed couples who traveled from the other side of the world for it. I have stood on New York City streets while strangers sang "At Last" to newlyweds who had never been able to hold hands in public before. I have watched people become fully, legally, joyfully themselves in front of my camera, over and over again, for twenty five years.

I'm still here. Still shooting. Still moved by every single one of these moments.

If you are planning a wedding, an elopement, a proposal, an engagement session, a family portrait, or any kind of celebration — and you want a photographer who has been genuinely part of this community his entire adult life — I would be honored to be there.

Happy Pride.

— Steven

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From the Marches to the Altar: My Life Inside the Marriage Equality Movement

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