February 23, 2024
By Logan Royce Beitmen Journal Staff Writer
Monroe Gallery of Photography presents Grey Villet’s tender images of the couple who legalized interracial love
Sixty years ago, Life Magazine photographer Grey Villet photographed Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial married couple who had been arrested and convicted under Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. The Lovings were eventually vindicated in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, a landmark civil rights decision that legalized interracial marriage and paved the way for same-sex marriage decades later.
But in 1965, when Villet photographed them, the Lovings were still weary from their yearslong legal battle and publicity-shy due to threats of lynching.
Villet’s photographs of the couple, on view at the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe through April 13, show them engaged in everyday domestic activities. As the late photographer’s wife, Barbara Villet, wrote in a New York Times essay, these photographs humanized the Lovings and showed that they were “a quintessentially ordinary couple extraordinarily in love with each other.”
“Emotional content always mattered most to Grey in his work and pursuit of images ‘as real as real could get.’ It’s what gives his take on the Loving family its intimacy and strength,” she wrote. “Unlike many other celebrated photographers, he avoided posing his subjects, refused to manipulate the action and simply waited patiently for telling moments to emerge, in the belief that reality would supply more truth than any imposition of his own ego.” Villet was famous for his spending many days with his subjects and shooting only with available light and a hand-held long lens, which allowed him to disappear into the background. Even the Lovings, who were quiet, private people, felt comfortable enough in his presence to reveal their intimate lives.
In addition to challenging racist ideas, Villet’s photographs of the Lovings challenged notions of gender and class, as well.
In some of his photographs, including one where Mildred is mending Richard’s shirt button and one where Richard is reclining with his head in her lap, Mildred is positioned higher in the frame than her husband, whereas in most art directed photographs and films of that era, women were traditionally positioned lower. Villet’s authentic slice-of-life images subverted the prevailing gender hierarchy.
His tender images also challenge stereotypes about working-class masculinity. As Barbara Villet wrote in the Times essay, her husband’s portraits of Richard Loving, in particular, revealed “the face of a laborer who, despite the macho exterior, is a sensitive man.”
Monroe Gallery’s “Loving” gives viewers the opportunity to reflect on this unlikely, history-making couple 60 years after Villet first photographed them.
‘LOVING’ By Grey Villet
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; through April 13
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., Santa Fe
HOW MUCH: Free, monroegallery.com
