Queer photography has existed nearly as long as Joseph Nicéphore Niépce snapped that first shot in the early 19th century. Sure, sometimes LGBTQ+ identity has been subtly coded for those in the know. However, as progress has been made, representation has become more prominent.
Art and social historians Flora Dunster and Theo Gordon took a deep dive into the legacy of queer photographers and their subjects to compile a conversation-starting coffee table book (or maybe something you want to keep on the bedroom nightstand), Photography — A Queer History (Ilex, May 7, 2024).
The 256-page book, featuring the work of 84 artists, provides historical and cultural perspectives, divided into themes like “Documenting Queer,” “The Spaces to be Seen,” and “Queer Landscapes.”
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Queerty offers a first look at some of the book’s exquisite findings that span the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ identity.
Parminder Sekhon
“Queer … can be felt, embodied and visualized in a multiple of ways,” writes Dunster and Gordon. Rather than approach the book chronologically, its authors “aim to collect and put into conversation photography that ranges across periods, places, and subject matter, and which carries the charge of a ‘queer effect.’ “
Like any art form, photography faces hurdles that are part of our collective legacy. Over the centuries, queerphobia and lack of access to self-representation have posed barriers, but resilient artists have found ways to overcome them. Parminder Sekhon’s above photograph is placed in relation to Frances Benjamin Johnson’s photograph of two women kissing circa 1890, proving that we have — and will continue — to exist.
Reynaldo Rivera
The authors write that the book’s first chapter “testifies to one of the medium’s most powerful aspects: that whatever appears in the image was ‘there’ before the lens.” Photographer Reynaldo Rivera (above) captured Latin gay boys, trans women, and drag queens in pre-gentrified East Los Angeles — a ghostly reminder of urban redevelopment’s impact on erasing queer communities and the parallel impact of AIDS in marginalized communities.
Christopher Udemezue
New York City-based Christopher Udemezue grounds much of his work in the queer Caribbean diaspora. The photograph “Untitled (Takyi and the Obeah Man)” draws inspiration from the 1760 Tacky’s War slave uprising in Jamaica against the British.
The photo represents Takui, a Fante chieftain who’s given protection by Obeah men who practice spiritual magic.
The authors say, “The photograph represents and enables projection and queer fantasy, drawing on a past narrative of magical power and protection in order to support queer Black resistance to oppression in the present.”
Udemezue is also the founder of Ragga NYC, a network of queer Caribbean artists and allies working across a wide range of disciplines—including visual art, fashion, poetry, and more—to explore how race, sexuality, gender, heritage, and history inform their work and their lives.
Deborah Bright
Deborah Bright’s Dreamgirls alters classic Hollywood imagery. In this iconic scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the photographer nudges George Peppard away from Audrey Hepburn to make room for a different kind of fantasy: “The lesbian presence roams from still to still, movie to movie, disrupting the narrative and altering it to suit her purpose.”
Lin Zhipeng
Lin Zhipeng, who also goes by “223” (named after a character from the 1994 film Chungking Express), photographs using film rather than digitally. Because much of his work is intimate, the Beijing-based artist’s work is often censored online and can only be viewed in galleries.
“I feel like I am chasing some kind of freedom, but it’s not a real freedom,” says 223.
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