Daniel Collins: The Poster Controversy

Celebration ’90 volunteer and photographer, Daniel Collins, talks about the transit ad poster shoot.

Collins: ” ‘Cause I knew there were hats and watches and t-shirts and shorts and all these things that said the words ‘Celebration ’90 Gay Games III & Cultural Festival’ and he said, ‘Oh, no, no. We can’t have the word Gay Games in this poster because the advertising company…’ who was doing the bus shelters and the LRT, ‘… has given us 75 % of a reduction if we leave the word Gay Games off the poster.’ So I was a little taken aback by this and suggested to him that perhaps we could do two versions because I thought there would be a lot of people in the gay community in Vancouver and certainly in the international community who would like to see something  with the word Gay Games on it being that this is the largest gay and lesbian festival in the history of the world. So, he agreed with me that we could do two versions. So, they came, and I have to admit that I tricked them. Knowing that the best pictures are always taken towards the end of the shoot, we did the pictures with the t-shirts – the plain t-shirts – first; I shot about ½ roll of film. And the pictures with all the Gay Games t-shirts on, I shot 2 ½ rolls. And everybody relaxed a lot more and were smiling more naturally, and everything was working much better once they had the Gay Games t-shirts on. And they, I guess, were forced to use these pictures because they were better than the other ones. So, what we came out with was a product something like this. And this went on to 42 bus shelters posters and 40 LRT [light rail transit] billboards. So, here we have a very happy group of people. ‘Come Celebrate with Us.’ But we’re not quite sure what we’re celebrating, and you finally look around and maybe ‘Celebration ‘90’? Although if you didn’t really know what that was you weren’t quite sure, and who are these people anyway? Oh, by the way there is something that gives everybody an inclination and that says ‘Gay Games III’ on this t-shirt. So, he ends up kind of wearing the responsibility for this. And nobody else is taking the responsibility and a lot of us have thought that this was extremely closeted of everybody and not something we particularly are proud of.”