EXCLUSIVE: A first look at “Photography — A Queer History”
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.” Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.Queerty offers a first look at some of the book’s exquisite findings that span the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ identity. “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.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.New York City-based Christopher Udemezue grounds much of his work in the queer Caribbean diaspora.
