Jamil Hellu and Guy Duca

“I was drawn to Guy Duca’s archive because of his family albums. The photographs of his childhood reminded me of my own photographs as a gay boy.” -Jamil Hellu

Born in Brazil in 1976, Jamil Hellu is a photographer who just completed his MFA at Stanford University. He was granted a BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003 and has lived in the Bay Area since then. In 2007, he was selected for a six-month residence at the CitÈ Internationale des Arts in Paris and was granted a Markowski-Leach scholarship both in 2008 and 2009, as promise of becoming a positive role model for other LGBTQ people.

Italian descendent, Guy Duca was born in Philadelphia on March 19, 1936. He joined the US Navy during the fifties. In the third year of his enlistment, he was granted a general discharge based on ìguilt by associationî regarding homosexuality activities, receiving no veteran benefits for his service. He then went to cosmetology school, stating years later that he was sorry he became a hairdresser because the job tended to make him hate women. He lived for nearly 25 years in San Francisco, owned a beauty shop on Geary Boulevard and a gay bar in the Tenderloin. He died of AIDS in 1989 at the age of 53.

From Guy Duca’s Archive

Making History (2010)
Digital pigment print
44″ x 68″