Silver gelatin print, 1941, 10 x 8 inches, Arts and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Jack Delano (Leo) was an American photographer employed by the Farm Security Administration, and born in Kiev, Ukrane. He documented Boricua (Puerto Rican) folkore and its relationship to the livelihood of working class Boricuas (Puerto Ricans); and was invited to photograph an April Sunday church service in Head County, Georgia.

Oil on Canvas, 1934, Arts and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Aaron Douglas (Gemini) was a U.S. American painter born in Topeka, Kansas. He was raised during the Harlem Renaissance, which invoked the surreal realism in his painted allegories. His African-centric imagery is most amplified in his "Aspects of Negro Life" series.

Oil on Canvas, 1934, Arts and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Whereas "The Negro in an African Setting" harks to pre-colonial harmony, "Song of the Towers" storytells the torment caused by eurocentric ideology, and the systemic injustices it forces upon, as Douglas would phrase it, the Negro in the USA today.

Color graphite on paper, 1935-1943, 16 x 23 inches, Arts and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Blanche Grambs (Pisces) was a painter born in Beijing, China to U.S. American parents. Her art highlights the aftermath of the Great Depression, spotlighting the working class, poor and unemployed.

Color graphite on paper, 1900-1934, Arts and Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Malvin Gray Johnson (Aquarius) was a U.S. American painter born in Greensboro, North Carolina. He painted iconic portraits of everyday people and was a movement-shaker during the Harlem Renaissance.

Color graphite on paper, 1880, Photographs and Prints Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Baiana's stoic and self-empowered stare urges you to see her as Her. She is an icon, for She validates the unwavering presence of Yoruban spiritual power ever-present in Bahia, Brazil today.

Color graphite on paper, 1875, Photographs and Prints Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

A woman vends from her market, in Río de Janeiro, Brazil. Mark Ferrez (Sagittarius) was a Brazilian photographer, and the son of a French sculptor.

Stereograph, 1900, Photographs and Prints Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Once upon a time, our ancestors were babies.

Silver gelatin print, 1904, 21 x 26 inches, Photographs and Prints Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (Aquarius: 1894–1938) was a U.S. American historian, author, and activist born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He expounded the comprehension of African and American cultural exchanges. He founded the Schomburg Center for Reseach in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library, in 1925. It was honored as a National Historic Landmark in 2017. His research and disseminations provided an invitation for Spanish-speaking Caribbeans to claim their place as descendants of the American and African diasporas. He was part of the Harlem Renaissance and unveiled the erasure of African ancestry in melanated, Spanish-speaking families. Schomburg is the reason ARCANUM exists today. He is the ancestor who inspires the curator, Anthonywash.Rosado, to cross-pollinate anthropology and curatorial practice; to gift African and American storytelling technologies to diasporic descendants and non-diasporic historians. He reminds us that the Caribbean--cradling Puerto Rico, which means "rich port," and was the epicenter of the Atlantic enslaved peoples trade--is inherently part of African and North American symbiosis.

Periodical, 1970, 8.5 x 11 inches, Estate of Ted Rauch via The LGBT Community Center archives

The Gay Activists Alliance (Sagittarius-Capricorn cusp) was founded in New York City on December 21, 1969, almost six months after the Stonewall riots, by dissident members of the Gay Liberation Front. It was founded as a militant, non-violent organization dedicated exclusively to the attainment of civil and social rights for gays. From 1971 to 1974, the GAA used this firehouse in SoHo as its headquarters, which for fifty years, has served as New York’s most important LGBT political and cultural community center during these years.

Black and white photograph, 1970, 10 x 8 inches, Leonard Fink Photographs Collection via The LGBT Community Center archives

Marsha P. Johnson (Virgo: 1945-1992) was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. Johnson was one of the leading movement-shakers in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. A founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, Johnson co-founded the gay and transvestite advocacy organization Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), alongside close friend Sylvia Rivera. A popular figure in New York City's gay and art scenes, Johnson posed for Andy Warhol, and performed with the drag troupe "Hot Peaches." Johnson was a kind legend in the streets of Greenwich Village. She was known as the "mayor of Christopher Street". From 1987 to 1992, Johnson was an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

Black and white photograph, 1977, 8 x 10 inches, Leonard Fink Photographs Collection via The LGBT Community Center archives

Fink's portrayal of Gay life began in 1967, when he photographed friends in Greenwich Village. His photographs of Gay Pride parades started with the first, in 1970. Leonard Fink was a well-known in the Village and at Pride parades, often rolling by on rollerskates and a tight tee with a camera hanging from his neck.

Black and white photograph, 1973, 10 x 8 inches, Leonard Fink Photographs Collection via The LGBT Community Center archives

The Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) was founded by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in 1970. "Sylvia and Marsha saw that the needs of street youth and transgender youth were not being taken in account by other early gay groups. They founded STAR to fill this gap.

STAR opened their first STAR House in a parked trailer truck in a Greenwich Village parking lot later that year. It functioned as a shelter and social space for trans sex workers and other LGBT street youth. However, the pair arrived one day to find the trailer was being towed, with as many as 20 youth still sleeping inside.

This experience made them decide to find a more permanent home for STAR House. 'Marsha and I decided to get a building,' Rivera told Leslie Feinberg in 1998. 'We were trying to get away from the Mafia’s control at the bars. We got a building at 213 Second Avenue.'

Sylvia and Marsha paid the rent on the building by doing street sex work at night. They hoped to use the top floor of the building to teach the youth how to read and write during the daytime.

STAR House was many firsts. It was the first LGBT youth shelter in North America. It was the first trans woman of colour led organisation in the USA. And it was the first trans sex worker labour organisation. STAR later expanded to other cities, before eventually collapsing in the mid-1970s. It has recently been revived in New York City." -Leslie Feinberg

Instant camera color photograph, 1973, 3 x 4 inches, Estate of Rudy Grillo via The LGBT Community Center archives

TLGBQ+ people march during the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day.

Instant camera color photograph, 1971, 3 x 4 inches, Estate of Rudy Grillo via The LGBT Community Center archives

Rudy Grillo was a member of the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, the Gay Activists Alliance, and a producer for community-based radio station WBAI, the New York station of the Pacific Radio network. Host of WBAI’s “Gay Rap,” Grillo was also the station’s Program Director of the Gay Men’s Department from 1980 until its dissolution in 1982.

Black and white photograph, 1971, 10 x 8 inches, Richard C. Wandel Photographs Collection via The LGBT Community Center archives

A woman styles a hat and dress down the runway of the Gay Activists Alliance's 1971 "Firehouse Fashion Show."

Black and white photograph, 1970, 10 x 8 inches, Richard C. Wandel Photographs Collection via The LGBT Community Center archives

Sylvia Rivera (Taurus: 1951-2002) was a Venezuelan and Puerto Rican American gay liberation and transgender rights activist in New York City. Rivera participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With close friend Marsha P. Johnson, they co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women; in their own home. Rivera and Johnson paved the way for interdisciplinary praxes that sustain TLGBQ+, GNC, and BIPoC lives and legacies.

Silver gelatin RC print, 1990, 7.5 x 9.5 inches, Estate of Darrel Ellis via Visual AIDS

Darrel Ellis (Sagittarius), a New York-based mixed media artist, explored self-portraits until he found photographed archives from his father, Thomas Ellis in the 1950s. Ellis reworked them, using paint and illustrations to investigate identity within the family dynamic and to re-map the familial narrative as a form of self-therapy. Ellis was a young, Black and gifted interdisciplinary artist who merged photography, painting and sculpture.

Painting on canvas, 1982, 22 x 24 inches, Estate of Darrel Ellis via Visual AIDS

In 1992, his work was shown in "New Photography 8" at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by Peter Galassi; one year after his first solo exibit at the Baron/Boisante gallery. The MoMA exhibition took place a couple of months after Ellis move to NYC in 1992. A major retrospective of his art was mounted in 1997 at Art in General, curated by the artist Allen Frame, Ellis's friend and later executor of his estate. The show was circulated to five U.S. American art museums.

Silver gelatin print, 1987, Visual AIDS archives

A prominent revolutionary in the 1980s Black British and African contemporary art scene, Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s (Aries) photographs hark a profoundly personal and political inspection of desire, diaspora and spirituality.

Silver gelatin print, 1986-1987, Visual AIDS archives

A son of a noble Yoruban family, in 1966 Fani-Kayode emigrated from Nigeria, Africa as political refugee. In 1980, he achieved a Bachelor of the Arts at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and an Masters of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in New York in 1983, before returning to the United Kingdom where he created and exhibited until his transition in 1989.

Silver gelatin print, 1987, Visual AIDS archives

In his works, the Black male body is the central point of his imagined depiction of the boundaries between spiritual and erotic fantasy; cultural and sexual difference.

Mixed media, 1991, 14.5 x 11.5 inches, Visual AIDS archives

Born Paula Jefferson, Affrekka (day of birth unknown) added the ethnic moniker to her given name when she was 13. Affrekka holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York's School of Visual Arts. With a focus in construction and African tradition, Affrekka states that she "still believe[s] in the great academic traditions of drawing and painting, above and beyond the mechanical and technological advances of the last few decades."

Black and white photograph, Year unknown, Visual AIDS archive

Ms. Colombia (1954–2018: day of birth unknown) was a colorful and beloved performance artist based in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY. Ms.Colombia received her Bachelor's degree in Engineering and Master's degree in Law from York University. Ms. Colombia moved from Medellín, Colombia to NYC in the 1970's.

Oil on linen, 1983, Visual AIDS archives

Gustavo Ojeda (Virgo) was a 20th-century Cuban-American painter. Ojeda was born in Havana, Cuba then emigrated to Spain, and eventually to Virginia, under exile from Castro’s ascendence into power in Cuba. At 17, he moved to New York City to attend Parsons School of Design. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Cintas Fellowship for Cuban artists which allowed him to continue his work in Spain. It was in Madrid where he began to experiment with nightscapes, a mode which predominates much of his work and for which he is most known.

Acrylic on canvas, 1984, Visual AIDS archives

Martin Wong (Gemini) was a U.S. American painter and pioneer of New York's East Village 1980s art scene. He lived in San Francisco from 1994 until his transition in 1999.

Typewritten ink letter, 1988, Carl George / Felix Gonzalez-Torres / Ross Laycock Archive Visual AIDS

The George, Torres, and Laycock Archive at Visual AIDS contains a document collection donated by artist Carl George. The collection is part of Carl George’s Artist+ Member file, on the Visual AIDS digital registry. The collection is a testament to a long-lasting friendship between Carl George, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Ross Laycock, and offers a window into the love, respect and humor of three friends who shared a deep, personal understanding of how AIDS affected every aspect of their lives.