Geoff Manasse photographs, 1970s-2016

Geoffrey Alan Manasse (September 9, 1950-Jan 19, 2018) was the son of Herbert and Florence Manasse. He grew up in Los Angeles where he attended Hollywood High School. He went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1968 to study economics where he also served as a photographer for university newspaper, The Daily Cardinal. He continued his study of economics at the University of California, Berkeley graduating in 1972. He decided to pursue photography as a career and in 1974 he became a staff photographer at the Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise. In 1977, he moved to the neighboring Claremont Courier, a weekly newspaper known for its outstanding photo essays in the tradition of Life magazine. Later he was a staff photographer for the Seattle Times from 1980 to 1981 and for the Bellevue Journal-American from 1984-86.

In the northwest he became inspired by the work being done by Seattle Times Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer, Jerry Gay. He had met Gay partly through the National Press Photographers Association, for which Mr. Manasse was co-editing a regional publication. He would go on to produce photos for Gay’s Picture Magazine, and to start his own successful freelance business – Geoff Manasse Photography, which included editorial clients such as, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Newsday, the New York Times, and USA Today.

Particularly notable among his many accomplishments was his decision to use photography to help make LGBTQ families more visible in the 1980s and 1990s when such families were often invisible – when lesbians and gay men had no right to marry and were often legally limited in their rights to adopt children. The result was a 1995 book of photographs of 24 gay and lesbian families titled Making Love Visible: In Celebration of Gay and Lesbian Families, with text by collaborator Jean Swallow.

He also documented the impact of the AIDS crisis in Seattle through the 1980s and 1990s. After his retirement, he lived for three years in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with his husband, Bao Le, where he once again used his skills as a photographer, videographer and website developer to support the growth of CARMAH, a non-profit organization promoting the health and quality of life of gay and bisexual men in Vietnam.

Besides photography, Mr. Manasse’s other passionate activities often revolved around music. He played tuba for the LGBTQ Rainbow City Band as well as the Brass Connection, a semi-pro brass quintet. He also tried his hand at writing music for the quintet, including a piece called “Gray Day” that accompanied a memorial video he made after his mother died in 2012.

Mr. Manasse died suddenly of a cardiac arrest in January, 2018 while playing soccer, a sport he loved.