GLOBAL QUEER PHOTOGRAPHY
IT IS DEEPLY HUMAN
to artistically process your own perspective, the life that surrounds you and the big issues that preoccupy you. It is probably an urge as old as art itself. The individual expression that turns out to be a collective desire in disguise. Something that defines each human being in their own unique character and at the same time connects everyone at the levels beyond – in the inherent impulse. An expression of one’s own history, of the existence of the self, something that can (perhaps) outlast the actual moment of the impulse itself.
Actually, I have to admit that this is something that goes beyond art of course. Every life leaves a legacy. It may be by crafting a sculpture or a piece of furniture, by building a house or taking a shit in the woods, by producing a child or a social media post. And yet it is arts and culture that provide us with a particular service in life. A unifying product, a feeling, a lasting impression.
Art is achieved through two factors: intention and perception.
Art asks the individual, “Why am I producing this? What is it supposed to mean?” and the collective, “How is it perceived? Will it be recognized?” (This view can of course be debated and I very often like to do so. Perhaps I should write that art asks me these questions – today. But I am concerned with something else as I write this text). Today I would like to highlight this one central idea.
QUEERLY HUMAN
In her foundational essay “Queer and Now” from 1993, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick famously proposed an understanding of ‘queer’ as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically”. This potential to defy categorisations, fixed meanings, and identities has made the idea of queerness so attractive and powerful for a movement and community as diverse and dynamic as that of LGBTQIA+ people.
At first glance, photography’s relation with queerness is complex: The medium captures a moment in time, the here and now of the object it depicts, and transforms it into a still image that endures. On the one hand, there lies great value in this evidential nature of the photograph to lay claim on ways of being in the world whose (right to) existence have been and are still questioned and rendered invisible by today’s dominant cultural regimes. On the other hand, the documentary quality of the photograph also carries the risk of appropriating and stabilizing meanings. The images assembled in this selection from the Queer Festival Heidelberg’s annual photo competition, however, defy any unified notion of queerness.
The photos not only depict queerness in their objects, they work to queer the image itself. Rather than box in the bodies that they depict, they allow for meanings to spill over. The serial format
Margaret (Weiyi) Liang is an artist/photographer based in London. Having resided in multiple countries growing up, Margaret derives her artistic voice out of an auto-theoretical perspective, from her experience of being a woman and a woman of color. She adopts performative portraiture and self-portraiture as her primary means of practice. Her subject matters include intersectional feminism, gender, and the Asian diaspora. Liang obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is now attending a Master’s program at the Royal College of Art in London. Her works have been exhibited across the USA and Europe, in galleries such as Photo Place Gallery, SE Center of Photography, Art Number 23, as well as published in journals like Fotofilmic and Wül Magazine.
3 Stripes, a Tank, and a Towel, April
Maxime Muller’s expansive visual lexicon and aesthetic sensibility serve as a tribute to the fabric of 20th-century analogue photography. Pioneering into the future, Muller adeptly steers time-honored techniques into the twenty-first century. The visual echoes of luminaries such as August Sander, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, and Jack Pierson resound and evolve through Muller’s imagery. Muller skillfully portrays a diverse spectrum of the drag community as a collective of spirited and rebellious individuals.
I want to show the power of transformation and the diversity of expression from within the community of cis-gendered, trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming individuals. The people I collaborate with are based in France, Germany and Belgium.
Maxime Muller
Polaroid formats, vulnerable insights in color, as well as black and white half-figure portraits, offer a unique combination of private insight and stringent homage. Earthy graining gives the subjects a sense of tangibility, but also cements them, allowing our gaze to emphatically linger. Gentle contours and strong contrasts of light and dark tell dramatic and suspenseful stories. In these visual tales where non-conformity is showcased through the transformative lens of drag, a contagious and deep-seated joy of life radiates throughout Muller’s portraiture. [CB]
In detailed series the photo book Deeply Human presents an exciting selection of contemporary global queer photography. Celebrating 15 years of Queer Festival Heidelberg, all of the images stem from the international submissions to the festival’s past four photo competitions (2020–2023). The ever-changing thematic focus and the international orientation of the competition provide both culturally and in terms of content an exceptional range of photographic positions and perspectives beyond the established norms, codes and visual languages.
The photo book is a very special kind of anniversary documentation. It is a huge gift the international artists who took part in our exhibitions have given us. The photographs are an expression of queer life and queer culture all over the world.
Dominic
Hauser and Martin J. V. Müller
