If one picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the story 18,000 pictures can tell.
Mark Lee picked up a camera in the 1980s and spent the next several decades documenting the LGBTQ history in the state of Indiana.
Lee is a 60-year-old native Hoosier who attended North Central High School and Indiana University.
He's also gay.
"I mean, I knew at an early age," Lee said, "But i didn't admit it to myself until I entered college, so when I was about 18."
He shared his coming out story with WRTV's Marc Mullins.
"I had a lot of fear, especially coming out to my dad, that I might be disowned and not be able to finish college because he would stop paying," Lee said. "So, I told him and he said he already knew. But he also said how proud he was of me for being so honest."
Before Lee left for college and before he came out to his loved ones, he picked up his first camera.
He would photograph drags shows and people at Bullwinkles in Bloomington.
Lee says his hobby took on a new significance after he graduated college, when he met his first friends who were HIV-positive.
Lee had no idea he would become an accidental historian, using his keen eye to tell so many stories.
"My friends Mike and Mark asked me to photograph them in '87 and they said they were old," Lee remembers, "They felt they were getting old, so they wanted their pictures taken before it was too late."
Two years later, the couple revealed to Lee they were HIV-positive.
With their health deteriorating two years later, the couple requested Lee photograph their last months and days.
The snapshots show them withering over a short period of time.
Still, Lee's pictures show the resilient spirits of so many Hoosiers who lost their lives to AIDS.
Lee has also spent years documenting stories of love.
Twenty years ago, he came up with the idea to photograph same sex couples who had been together for ten years or longer.
Among them, Ian and Ambrose, a curator and a scientist, who spent 62 years together.
"Ambrose lived in a nursing home the last two years of his life," Lee explains, "But Ian went to visit him every day."
Mark also remembers photographing his very first Indy Pride festival on Monument Circle in 1991.
He remembers the protesters too.
"They thought it was an abomination," he said, "And all of a sudden the Gay Men's Chorus got up on stage and they started to sing "God Bless America."
And the protesters had no idea what to do. They were like, 'Do we salute the song? Or do we continue protesting?' So they ended up taking off their hats and saluting."
It was a snapshot in time, that moved Lee, who said, "It was to me the definition of pride. Just being able to stand up there and say who you are. Not only gay, but American."
In 2015, Lee snapped one of his favorite photos on the Indiana Statehouse steps, featuring part of the mile-long flag that was in New York City during the 25th anniversary of Stonewall.
The day he snapped the photo was the same day the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down, opening the door for same-sex couples to wed.
"It was liberating. It was exciting to be in that moment."
Lee donated more than 18,000 of his photographs from over the years to the Indiana Historical Society, which then created an exhibit, called "Visual Journey from AIDS to Marriage Equality."
That exhibit has also been condensed from its original form, so it can travel the state.
The traveling exhibit has shown up at the Indianapolis airport, the Eli Lilly, Inc. headquarters building, and in libraries and museums in smaller towns around the state.
Lee hopes people see the love, the heartbreak, the triumphs, and the struggles in his snapshots.
And he wants the younger LGBTQ generations to pay close attention.
"I just want them to know where we came from and these are the people who fought for your rights to do the things that you're doing now," Lee said.
You can view some of the images Lee has taken through the years below.
