Queer photography portraiture has been a powerful medium for exploring identity, visibility, and resistance. Through their work, queer photographers have challenged traditional notions of gender and sexuality while fostering a sense of community.

For LGBTQ History Month, the Socially Engaged Art Salon (SEAS) is staged at Colonnade House, the exhibition “In Your Face – Queer Photography Now” by thirty-five local and international photographers.

The exhibition was informed by three books published recently in the UK on these subjects.

In “Photography—A Queer History,” authors Flora Dunster and Theo Gordon explore how photographers have utilised the camera to subvert traditional representations, highlighting the fluidity of identity.

Åsa Johannesson’s project, “The Queering of Photography,” initiated in 2015, interrogates norms connected to photographic portraiture, questioning what qualifies as a ‘good’ portrait. Her collaborative approach emphasises the subversive potential of queer representation.

The Victoria & Albert Museum’s publication, “Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography,” offers an unprecedented view of photographic history through a queer lens, drawing on one of the oldest and largest photography collections in the world.

These works and the photographs in the exhibition “In Your Face” collectively illuminate the diversity and resilience of queer experiences, demonstrating how photography serves as both an art form and a means of activism, challenging societal perceptions and advocating for the recognition and rights of marginalised communities.