From the Archives: 10 Lomography Interviews with LGBTQIA+ Film Photographers

Previously, we listed 10 interviews with female film photographers in order to look back on some of our best interviews and once again hear these artists' powerful voices.

For this edition of From the Archives, we dove right into the Lomography Magazine archive rabbit hole in search of some of the best interviews we've had with LGBTQIA+ film photographers, in time for this' year's Pride Month celebration. These interviews range from exciting and insightful to deeply moving and inspiring.

Let's get into it!

Photographer and art director Alia Romagnoli talks about her photography and core sources of inspiration such as Indian textiles, folk art, architecture, mythology and storytelling in this 2019 interview with Lomography. She shares her perspectives as a queer, mixed-race woman and the nostalgia and keen interest in her roots that drive her work.

Intimacy and formality merge in these large-format images taken by photographer Sarah Stellino for her project Queering Rural Spaces, which centers on the stories of LGBTQIA+ individuals living in rural communities.

Asked how her project started, Sarah noted that she "wanted to leave photographs behind for the next generation of queer youth to find and wonder what these people’s lives were like."

Manila-based photographer Ricardo Yan II tells us about his life-long affair with photography in this 2022 interview. He talks about everything from his first experience with film as a six-year-old and taking Photography as a major in college, to colonialism in Philippine photography, male portraiture, nightlife photography, and more.

In this 2019 feature, documentarians Sebastian Franke and Paul Max take us on an unanticipated trip to the local drag scene of Eastern Europe with photos of drag queens taken in Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia and Hungary. They talk about the under-appreciated and overlooked sub-culture in the region and show us the power of photography especially as a tool for telling the stories of the marginalized.

In this interview Colombian-American artist Antonio Pulgarin talks about the cultural and sexual identity which inspired his project Fragments of the Masculine. Taking old photos from his uncle and father, he dissects existing societal constructs pertaining to "manliness" especially in Latin America, such as links between the image of masculinity, the military and the prison system.

Personal roots, black portraiture and medium and large format photography converge in artist Jeremy Grier's work which focuses on his journey of reconnecting with his hometown in Hartford, Connecticut, after spending some time in New York.

Talking about photographing his hometown, he said: "I wanted to document the north end of Hartford, where I grew up. I think the lack of documentation of black people, black life up north – you know in the northeast part of America, is lacking – is an issue. There is no photo culture where I'm from, you're raised not used to being photographed by strangers."

New York-based photographer Carson Stachura talks about re-defining queer/trans portraiture, their analogue photography aspirations as a non-binary emerging artist and more in this 2022 interview. The then 21-year-old also shared their film kit, using the Lomography Color Negative and interacting with fellow artists that keep them inspired as a photographer.

Definitely one of the most interesting film photography projects out there, in WE DO THE REST artist Sophie Schwartz explores grief, memory, and queer connection. Sophie came from a very creative family, their father being a photographer and their mother being a seamstress and craftsperson. The project was initiated by their father in 1979 where he anonymously sent Diana cameras to more than 200 photographers for an exhibition, supposedly as his MFA thesis at the Ohio University.

After their father's death, Sophie found boxes of Diana cameras alongside negatives, contact sheets and letters at the attic of their childhood home. What emerged from their consequent archival process is WE DO THE REST as it was at the time of the Lomography interview in 2021: a reconnection with their father and his creative endeavors, as well as some of the original participants of the project.

In this 2018 interview, artist Júlia Brümmer takes us on a deep-dive of her creative process using infrared photography and the LomoChrome Purple Film to capture her fashion designs. Drenched in in fantasy and intrigue, the project is a reflection of Júlia's aspirations as a fashion photographer and her deep interest in fashion and history.

Photographing An Underground Music Scene With @Crimebird

Chaotic, energetic, and dreamy perfectly describe these photos taken by @crimebird in some of the many gigs they've documented as a film photographer and artist. In this interview, they talked to us about the underground music scene and DIY culture, and their independent label Knifepunch Records which at its core they describe as a "gay lil trans community for creators and comrades".

Photography and activism go hand in hand. Through the craft, photographers have the capacity to reveal the world as it is right now and dream up an ideal future.

As a bonus, we're looking back on an in-depth article by writer Elisa Parrino on activism from the 1960s to 2020s and the role that photography plays in trumping traditions and catalyzing societal development.

We'd like to thank the artists and models who took part in these interviews to give us glimpses of the truths of LGBTQIA+ individuals.

written by sylvann on 2023-06-11 #culture #people #places #archives #lgbtqia