Tom Jackson, a fifty-something dump-truck driver and self-styled ‘redneck’ living in an insalubrious basement studio, made Netflix viewers everywhere weep when he was made over and reunited with his lost love by Queer Eye’s Fab Five. When Monica Beverly Hillz came out as transgender on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a first for a competitor, the tears flowed.
The queer community have made other ways of seeing sexuality, gender and bodies possible, now, perhaps partly down to the success of shows like RuPaul and Queer Eye, those non-binary ways of seeing are sashaying their way into the mainstream conscience.
Yet it wasn’t so long ago that the streets of New York were raging with the energy of the Stonewall Riots, and it was only in July 2011 that the state officiated its first same-sex marriage. It often takes longer to change attitudes than to change laws – which is where art comes in.
Jane’s, 2017, by Mikaela Lungulov-Klotz. Courtesy of the artist
At New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, ‘Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography’ (running through to 2 September) presents 12 visions of the queer community in the city today: from stage performances to private bedrooms, portraits of loved ones to perspectives on the heteronormative canons in art history.
Men are also affected by the cis-male gaze – as Ryan James Caruthers, one of the youngest photographers in the exhibition, reveals in works from his breakthrough series of intimate self-portraits, Tryouts, shot while he was still an undergraduate at Parsons. Exploring often conflicted ideals about masculinity, the athletic body, and queerness, as he came to terms with his own sexuality and body, Caruthers questions what it means to be a man – and how men are oppressed by those standards.
The corrosive nature of the male gaze is echoed in Ryan Duffin’s appropriated images of ideals of machismo torn from 1980’s self-help guide Working Out, juxtaposed with stereotypes of masculine success, from luxury homes to ostentatious cars. Equally personal is Chilean-born, Brooklyn-based Mikaela Lungulov-Klotz’s emotive documentation of her twin sister’s transition, images that we are still not used to seeing in public spaces.
Erika Norel (clarity), 2013, by Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera
As Jess Richmond suggests in her photographs of twisted limbs and contorted torsos – queer, gay, straight, non-cis, transgender – bodies are bodies. Bodies experience pain, pleasure, love. Richmond prints self-portraits to life-size, cuts them out, and photographs them again: the process of this shifting self image, transferred from one space to another, is a comment on the fluidity of our identity.
The world at large may not yet be ready to accept what these artists show us, but the exhibition creates a safe and inclusive environment that imagines a not-too-distant future for all queer lives.
Men Embracing (Rick and Kevin), 2016, by Andrew Jarman. Courtesy of the artist
The Madness of Many, 2016, by Jess Richmond. Courtesy of the artist
Working Out I, 2016, by Ryan Duffin. Courtesy of the artist
The company of her shadows, 2016, by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. Courtesy of the artist
After Tennis, 2016, by Ryan James Caruthers, from the Tryouts series. Courtesy of the artist
Untitled, 2014, by Kevin Aranibar-Molina, from the Over the Fence series. Courtesy of the artist
Complex Occupation, 2016, by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. Courtesy of the artist
INFORMATION
‘Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography’ is on view until 2 September. For more information, visit the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art website
ADDRESS
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
26 Wooster Street
New York
-
The Emory, RSHP’s first luxury hotel in London, is a rising starNew London hotel The Emory presents the perfect showcase of RSHP’s signature functionalist style and hospitality group Maybourne’s elevated luxury
-
‘Born in Oasi Zegna: The Book’ looks back to the house’s Alpine rootsPublished by Rizzoli, ‘Born in Oasi Zegna’ looks towards the Oasi Zegna natural territory in the Italian Alps, where ZEGNA opened its first wool mill in 1910 and has since fostered a thriving natural ecosystem of more than 500,000 trees
-
The New York art exhibitions to see nowFrom MoMA to the smaller spaces, here are the best New York art exhibitions to catch before in May 2024.
-
The New York art exhibitions to see now
From MoMA to the smaller spaces, here are the best New York art exhibitions to catch before in May 2024.
-
Surreal, uncanny, seductive: step into Graham Little’s worldScottish artist Graham Little presents his first US retrospective at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York
-
The cosmos meets art history in Vivian Greven’s New York exhibitionVivian Greven’s ‘When the Sun Hits the Moon’, at Perrotin in New York City, is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the USA
-
The Met’s ‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’ dissects the avant-garde in early advertisingA new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York explores the role of product photography and advertising in shaping the visual language of modernism
-
Tony Notarberardino’s Chelsea Hotel Portraits preserve a slice of bygone New York life‘Tony Notarberardino: Chelsea Hotel Portraits, 1994-2010’, on show at New York’s ACA Galleries, is the photographer’s ode to the storied hotel he calls home and its eclectic clientele
-
‘LA Gun Club’: artist Jane Hilton on who’s shooting who‘LA Gun Club’, an exhibition by Jane Hilton at New York’s Palo Gallery, explores American gun culture through a study of targets and shooters
-
Detroit Institute of Arts celebrates Black cinema‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) brings lost or forgotten films, filmmakers and performers to a contemporary audience
-
BLUM marks 30 years of Japanese contemporary art in AmericaBLUM will take ‘Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood’ to its New York space in September 2024, continuing its celebration of Japanese contemporary art in America
