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It is wonderful how they redesigned the steps because that is a clear message for everyone, not just the queer community, that this museum is a refuge for people, a protected space.”
On view now through September 28, “Queer Lens” is the first major exhibition in the U.S. to explore the full sweep of photographic history through a distinctly queer perspective.
It’s a story, a rebellion, a mirror for society.
“To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. This breakthrough marked the beginning of a division between straight and gay identities.
Protected by the cover of a scientific photograph, Edward Muybridge tucked discreetly a sequence of two women kissing (1887) in his landmark series studying movement.
The show offers poignant visual stories that illuminate the resilience, beauty and complexity of queer, South African lives.
Read our feature on the series here.
My Body Is a Weapon by Carson Stachura
If photography is a lens on power and relationships, then trust is central to this work Carson Stachura’s sensual portraits of their transgender friends.
In this series, the artist places sapphic desire in sensuous, biophilic environments, demonstrating her radical approach to documenting lesbian culture.
Read our feature on the series here.
The Jon Gould Collection of Andy Warhol Photographs
“Who is Andy Warhol?” is a question that has saturated pop culture because it has endless answers.
Another remarkable example is a highly transgressive 1891 image by Alice Austen showing herself and two female friends, all dressed like men. Shortly before his death from complications of AIDS, Wojnarowicz photographed himself immersed in dirt with only a portion of his face exposed, simulating a death mask. Organized chronologically, the survey reveals how attitudes and customs have evolved alongside technical advancements in photography.
Overall, the exhibition is a concise history lesson that ties queer photography to consequential moments, including the 19th-century birth of the term “homosexual,” the popularity of drag clubs in the 1920s–30s, the emergence of homophile groups during World War II, the 1950s Lavender Scare, Stonewall and the rise of the Gay Liberation Movement, the AIDS Crisis, ACT-UP and Queer Nation, the legalization of gay marriage, and the recent rise of decidedly queer art and increased attention to inclusivity.
Ray, a heterosexual artist, was flaunting how cool it was to be “in the know” of the modern trends.
Hiding in Plain Sight, 1935-1949
Despite intense discrimination, many queer Americans found ways to express their true selves. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
Susan Sontag, “On Photography”
The camera is an instrument for queer photographers to challenge the norms.
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10 Famous Queer Photographers
Queer photography is more than a snapshot. If looking back contains the power to unsettle society, then its act suggests radical possibilities for queer photographers. It helps them express different identities. Such politics have been put into practice by several image-makers this year whose work boldly observes, confronts and disobeys conventional modes of representation.
Consider Carson Stachura’s arresting portraits of transgender people in their bedrooms whose reciprocal gaze reminds us we are guests in their intimate worlds, or Dean Sameshima, whose work invites the viewer to peer into the vanishing architecture of queer, public erotica.
Some surprising tidbits brought to light include Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 sequence of two women kissing and the extensive number of LGBTQ+ historical figures and celebrities included in the museum’s salon-style installation “Friends of Dorothy,” a common term for gay people that refers both to the Wizard of Oz movie and the gay friends of the writer Dorothy Parker.
Thematically, several subjects — such as the nude, seen with reverence through a same-gender gaze — transcend time periods.
“I remember being punished as a child for staring”, wrote bell hooks while discussing the idea of female spectatorship, “Afraid to look, but fascinated by the gaze.
A Photographic History of Queer Intimacy
A show of more than 270 works dating from the mid-19th century to now tells of evolving technology and customs.
LOS ANGELES — A circa 1848 daguerrotype featuring a nude lesbian couple engaging in foreplay meets Matías Sauter Morera’s AI-assisted fictional portrait of what he terms a “pegamacho,” a rural heterosexual Costa Rican man known to have discreet sexual encounters with gay men, in Queer Lens: A History of Photographyat the Getty Museum.
As such, Sepuya invites the viewer to reflect on the intimate relationship between our environment and the construction and mediation of identity. I am really happy with the support I received from the Getty, from its conception to installation. A very rare image by James Van der Zee (1927) shows Black men wearing female attire.
Here we see celebrated photographers Cecil Beaton and Man Ray dressed in drag.
In 1987, Hujar himself died of an Aids-related illness.
Read our feature on the series here.
Eye Me by Zanele Muholi
For Zanele Muholi, whose portraits of queer South Africans were displayed at SFMOMA and Tate, photography is a social medium: “I get an opportunity to meet people through other people they trust”, the photographer says.
That’s why we need black, fat, femme, butch, non-binary, and trans bodies. Corinne once claimed in her 1993 artist statement that she had “the wrong kind of personality to be making art out of sexual imagery” due to her anxiety about receiving negative press. Her 2004 image of her nursing her baby is a reminder of the resilience and evolution of our community.
One of the final images is Matias Sauter’s exquisite “Christian en el ‘Amor de Calle’,” showing a young man in the brink of adulthood.
InShadow Cast, images from vintage gay porn are rasterized, cropped and imbued with new meaning.