“This magazine is filled with success stories. It’s about people like you and me who’ve done it and are proud of it.” So begins the premiere editorial of Les Girls, written by founder, performer, and editor M.B. West. Launched in New York by Jennifer Jordan Associates at the turn of the decade, this debut issue was designed to dismantle "society's inhibiting taboos" by offering a community-focused, empowering space for cross-dressers, trans performers, and female impersonators.

Far from sensationalist, M.B. West created Les Girls as a lifeline for isolated readers carrying shame or guilt, balancing glamour with real-world visibility. This premiere issue offers a rich snapshot of late-70s nightlife and performance culture, featuring profiles on Genie Dee (performing alongside Cher in Las Vegas), Andrea Nicole (Miss Gay California in Beverly Hills), and coverage of The Closet Ball, an event dedicated to newcomers stepping into public performance for the very first time.

With its candid commentary, striking studio portraits, and celebratory tone, Les Girls stands as an essential document of queer print history at the dawn of the 1980s.

Country: United States
Year: 1979
Publisher: Jennifer Jordan Associates
Issue: Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 1979-80
Size: 280mm x 215mm
Print: Offset
Text: English
Condition: Very good

While the rest of the country was celebrating the Bicentennial, the underground was drafting a new Declaration of Independence. This oversized pin-back button is a direct artefact from the 1976 Gay Rights National Convention in Kansas City — a historic summit where activists from across the United States gathered to forge a unified national agenda.

The "Gay Rights '76" branding was a masterstroke of political theatre, purposefully hijacking the patriotic fervour of America’s 200th anniversary to demand a seat at the table of freedom and equality. Issued under the guidance of the National Gay Task Force, this pin served as a badge of defiance and a symbol of a movement that was no longer content with localised progress. It stands as a rare, high-impact piece of political ephemera from a year when the fight for our rights officially went national.

Country: United States
Year: 1976
Organisation: National Gay Task Force (NGTF)
Size: 50mm
Text: English
Condition: Good, light scratches.

The mid-1970s was a period where the personal became deeply, radically political. Published out of Baltimore by a collective of leftist activists, Women: A Journal of Liberation was one of the earliest and most influential periodicals of the Second-Wave Feminist movement. This particular 1976 issue arrived at a critical juncture, directly tackling the intersections of feminism, LGBTQ+ identity, and female sexuality.

During this era, mainstream feminist organisations often tried to distance themselves from lesbianism, infamously labeled the "Lavender Menace", out of fear it would derail the movement. Independent journals like Women did the exact opposite. They carved out an uncensored space for lesbians, gender-nonconforming writers, and radical feminists to dismantle traditional gender roles and articulate a new sexual politics. Filled with grassroots essays, poetry, and raw, first-person narratives, this volume is an essential piece of print media history from the frontline of the sexual revolution.

Country: United States
Year: 1976
Cover Illustration: Dorothy Dobbyn
Issue: Vol. 5, No. 2
Size: 280mm x 215mm
Print: Offset
Text: English
Condition: Very good

When Al Pacino went undercover into the leather bars of the Meatpacking District, he walked into a cultural lightning rod. William Friedkin’s Cruising remains one of the most controversial artefacts in queer cinema history, a film so polarising that New York activists famously blew whistles to disrupt its production. This chirashi — a uniquely Japanese promotional flyer distributed in cinema lobbies — captures that tension, translating the grit of the West Side waterfront for a global audience through a stark, high-contrast lens.

The front features a low-key portrait of Pacino emerging from the shadows, his title underscored by a switchblade in a sharp nod to the "leather murders" at the heart of the plot. On the reverse, the flyer acts as a striking cultural primer, featuring an illustrated guide to the "Hanky Code" to explain the secret signals of the scene to a Japanese public. Whether viewed as a problematic caricature or a rare celluloid record of a pre-AIDS underground, this flyer documents the moment New York’s leather subculture was exported as a polished, noir commodity.

Country: Japan
Year: 1981
Organisation: Toei Japan
Size: B5 - 176mm x 250mm
Print: Offset
Text: English and Japanese
Condition: Very Good, minor wear on edges.

Launched in 2009 for the year ahead, this was the first-ever calendar produced by the editors of BUTT magazine, Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom. True to the publication's signature aesthetic, the calendar traded the clinical for the candid, featuring 61 "international homos" captured through the lens of legendary contributors like Wolfgang Tillmans, Alasdair McLellan, and Bruce LaBruce.

More than a simple time-keeping tool, this artifact is a curated gallery of early 2010s queer photography. Printed on the magazine’s iconic matte paper and organized week-by-week, it served as a high-impact antidote to the "excruciating hangovers and painful resolutions" of New Year’s Day. Today, these pages stand as vintage posters in their own right — a record of the community's global reach and the effortless, gritty glamour that made BUTT the "queen of photography magazines".

Country: The Netherlands
Year: 2009
Publisher: Top Publishers BV
Size: 300mm x 220mm
Print: Offset
Text: English
Condition: Fine, cover is unbound with slight discolouration, half the pages are still glue bound with remaining pages loose, although all in crisp condition.

The category is: Legend. This original silver gelatin print captures the titans of the New York ballroom scene at the precise moment they crossed over from the underground into the global zeitgeist. Shot by renowned fashion photographer Michel Comte for the 1991 US release of Jennie Livingston’s seminal documentary Paris Is Burning, the portrait features the architects of a movement: Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Octavia St. Laurent, and more.

Comte’s lens elevates the cast with the same high-gloss reverence usually reserved for Hollywood royalty — a fitting tribute for a community that invented "Realness". Provided to the media for promotional use during the film's initial run, this original print documents the face of the houses that gave the world vogue, drag, and a lexicon of survival. It remains one of the most essential visual records of a culture that refused to be invisible.

Country: United States
Year: 1991
Organisation: Prestige
Size: 200mm x 260mm
Print: Silver Gelatin
Text: English
Condition: Very Good, minor wear on edges.