atlanta recap, part 2
Two other activities of note last weekend were Atlanta Pride and the High Museum. The Pride Festival in Atlanta goes on for 3 days in the park. We walked through on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, and it was packed both times. The cool thing about Pride in Atlanta for me was how ethnically diverse it was. Well, maybe diverse is being generous, but it was not a park full of white queers. Also it seemed like a lot of the businesses surrounding the park were on board with the festival, sporting rainbow flags or signs saying “Happy Pride!” The bar where we ended up on Saturday night displayed no overt acknowledgment of Pride, but was using rainbow coasters.
The whole point of the trip originally was to go to the High Museum and see the Louvre and the Annie Leibovitz exhibits. While the Louvre stuff was spectacular, the Annie Leibovitz was what got to all of us the most. It intertwines her professional photographs with personal ones, and the result is this really powerful look into her life and who she is. It seemed particularly fitting that we were there during Pride weekend, because one of the most amazing parts of the exhibit was her documentation of the illness and death of Susan Sontag. It was hard to view, but at the same time I felt grateful that these two brilliant and passionate women could find each other, share lives together, and now in 2007 the public allows and is allowed this intimate look into their relationship. It’s that kind of thing that Pride is about, I think.
