Spotlighting 6 Queer Photographers and their Impactful Work
Commemorating pride month sharing photographic work with a focus on queer themes and representations 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️📸
This year, to commemorate Pride Month, we opened up submissions to share work which has a focus on queer themes and representations, and the response has been nothing short of phenomenal.
We are incredibly excited to share with you the diverse and inspiring responses we received through the call-out and shed light on the amazing projects that have emerged.
From exploring varied representations of queer identities, to work that explores the intricacies of LGBTQ+ experiences, the collection of submitted projects showcases creativity in fostering understanding and acceptance.
Scroll below to read about all submitted projects in detail - Happy Pride Month ❤️
The Butch Order by Louise Dalgleish
About the photographer
Hi, my name is Louise, I’m a butch dyke from Portsmouth and I’m also a drag king. I help run a community group - Drag Kings of Manchester and those lot are my life and soul!
What I feel is a full-time job is my terminal illness which is progressive and comes with many complex medical issues. Whilst I live these two very different lives - my queerness and art are always at the forefront of who I am, not my disabilities.
Being a patient in hospital, there’s little control or say in what happens. But there's a reversal when I photograph people. You’re given control. You're leading during a shoot. To be in a position like this is both powerful and euphoric.
The queer joy is an overlap experienced by myself, and the individuals being photographed.
About The Butch Order
This year, I began ‘The Butch Order’, an ongoing project which celebrates unseen queer joy and the intimacy that parallels.
When queer people are present in the media it’s often not in a positive light and almost never touches on intimacy as it’s coming from an outside or commercial perspective. I document moments of queer joy and the overlap with intimacy, which is often censored or faces backlash from non-LGBTQ+ individuals as it isn’t the ‘palatable’ part of the queer community which you see on TV, social media and on the news. Sharing the photographs with others is significant because it’s the unfiltered representation queer people deserve.
There’s a divide in how queer people exist through expression. The intersectional communities are still in the shadows, people aren’t interested if you’re not a skinny cis white gay guy.
‘With a focus on butch lesbians, transmasculine individuals and non-binary people, Dalgleish is determined to reframe representation in a way that is from a queer perspective. The Butch Order shines a light on and celebrates these unseen subjects and their intimate moments that are often hidden’. (Brig News article)
A Message To You by Vi Dimitrova
About the photographer
Vi Dimitrova is a documentary photographer with a passion for capturing the beauty of the LGBTQ+ community. Born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria, Vi is now based in London, United Kingdom. Here, they continue to pursue their love of photography.
Through their art, Vi hopes to share stories about marginalised groups. They are dedicated to ensuring LGBTQ+ voices are heard and celebrated. Vi's creative approach to photography has helped create a more inclusive and diverse portrait of the LGBTQ+ community.
About A Message To You
The project 'A Message to You' aims to portray a united community. Over the years, queer people have fought to be heard, seen, and accepted as who they are. It has been a continuous battle for our rights. As Marsha P. Johns says, 'No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.'
These series of colour portraits were created as part of my first-year BA Photography course. Each participant was given a plain sheet of pen and paper and asked to write a message they believed was important to the community. They were also asked to show up as themselves without preparing for the photo shoot.
The series represents an authentic and honest insight into each individual's personality. The portraits capture moments of joy, satisfaction, and pride. The project reminds us to be strong, unapologetic, and strive to stay true to ourselves despite what society might think of us.
This documentary series of images features portraits of LGBTQ+ people with a message of unity and integration to the community. The idea behind the project was to create a body of work narrated to a particular viewer. Through this project, I hope to bring joy and pride to everyone and show queer people they're not alone - they have a family, and the community loves and supports them.
Find out more about the project and see more images here.
Nurturer by Hasna Tayyar
About the photographer
Hasna is a British Jamaican/Turkish Cypriot digital and analogue photographer. After graduating with her BA Honours degree in photography in 2019, Hasna began to explore her craft by photographing her own personal projects which primarily focused on documenting moments with her friends and family.
It was through this that she realised that this was her favourite kind of work, and this became her main affair. A lot of Hasna’s work highlights her relationships and emotional connections with those around her. She also has a passion for documenting her ongoing exploration of her identity.
About Nurturer
“Nurturer” is my project focusing on capturing examples of nurturing in my personal life, whilst exploring my identity and womanhood. The project mostly focuses on my relationship with my partner.
Unfiltered Sexuality by George Stone
About the photographer
I'm a Photographer based in North London and I’m currently studying fashion photography at London College of Fashion. I practice both fine art and fashion photographic styles mostly centred around queer masculinity.
About Unfiltered Sexuality
The title of the project is called Unfiltered Sexuality. It was originally based on people's alter egos on hookup apps that is very common in the gay community, but now it is more of an appreciation of the queer male body and a place for people to embrace their nude bodies.
Find out more about the project and see more images here.
t boy swag by BUNNYTEEF
About the artist
BUNNYTEEF a full-time gender anarchist and transsexual, multidisciplinary, nonsense-maker whose artist practice addresses trans sex, intimacy, desirability, and religious experiences from a crip, non-monogamous, non-binary, and non-person perspective.
His practice is heavily focused on consent first, safe and trauma-informed sets that are accessible to disabled, neurodivergent, BIPOC trans, and queer people. They are currently at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham studying a BA Hons in Film and Digital Art in his second year, while also looking to train in intimacy coordination and continue with his sex-positive, intimacy-focused art.
About t boy swag
t boy swag is a collection of boudoir-type portrait photography shot by Bihari Nina, directed by Bihari Nina and Bunnyteef and starring Bunnyteef - celebrating transmasculinity and butchness in response to "the desirability of the impassioned shapeshifter" also by Bunnyteef - in which he explored the infantilisation of transmasculine people parallel to the sexualisation of the same individuals when presenting in a hyperfeminine manner.
Shapeshifter looked at the ways in which the general public saw desirability and applied it to the context of his transmaculine, crip, mid-size, hairy body - "t boy swag" was created in response to this as a rebellion against cishet beauty standards and sexuality and instead celebrates his own gender expression, what they feel empowered in - and expresses the way he feels connected to those elements.
“This is my working class, trans, queer, butch, mess of masculinity. This is me empowered.”
Find out more about the project and see more images here and check out Bihari Nina’s work here.
Photographing LGBTQ+ Communities in Greece and the UK with Niki Stevens
About the photographer
My work as a photographer has always been in line with my work as a psychotherapist. It explores the most ‘uncomfortable’ themes of urban isolation, absence, and mental health. The way I capture a moment in time is always in relation to the intersubjectivity of the people, their environments, the history of the place they live in and the way they are interacting with each other.
My aim is to capture the feeling of a space or a person at a particular moment and re-introduce it through my lens to the sight of someone else in order for them to reflect on it and create their own personal link and meaning. I am always trying to invite the viewer to play with silence between what has been said and unsaid.
About the project
Photographing people from the queer community both in Greece and the UK underlines the importance to feel safe and seen. As a queer psychotherapist and photographer from Athens, who has been bullied all throughout school for just being queer/creative/different, and growing up in a country where marginalised groups of people are not safe due to police murders and the rise of fascist parties, safety and visibility is everything to me.
Ballroom has started from the same principles, the need to feel safe and seen, where creativity and queerness have a place to blossom and be celebrated. As Tony Morrison used to say, ''community care is self care'' and without our community, we are lost.
Attending balls and taking vogue classes is something that I found nourishing for my inner child. Hopefully, my pictures can convey the respect and love that I have for people who are not afraid to express themselves. I believe by not hiding and suppressing who we are for non-guaranteed safety, we give permission for others to subconsciously do the same.
