By Răzvan Ion
I deliberately used Susan Sontag’s title, On Photography, intending to quote her. ‘To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.’
Several notable queer photography books were published in 2024, showcasing diverse perspectives and experiences within the queer micro-society. I also recommend exploring our 2024 reviews on fabulous books, films, and music.
Aveux non Avenus, 1930, Claude Cahun (1894–1954), Platinum print, 18×13 cm. Given by Michael Hoppen © Estate of Claude Cahun
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and New Queer Art. Edited by Jonathan D. Katz, (Monacelli Press) should be in every queer library. It is a landmark survey of LGBTQ+ art and culture, anchored in the legacy of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Edited by Jonathan D. Katz—Associate Professor of Practice in History of Art, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania—the book expands upon the critically acclaimed 2019 exhibition of the same name, which Katz curated. Often treated as the symbolic beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States, the Stonewall Riots serve as About Face’s point of departure. Yet Katz’s scope stretches far beyond this historic moment, presenting a sweeping narrative that illuminates the ways queer art has both predated and responded to the cultural revolutions of the past half-century. Katz deftly weaves together historical context and artistic practice, revealing how gender and sexual identity have been interrogated, celebrated, and reimagined in visual culture. The book features over 350 artworks by more than 40 LGBTQ+ artists from across generations and geographies, showcasing a diversity of voices often underrepresented in mainstream art history. With contributions from artists and scholars, About Face creates a dynamic conversation around queer aesthetics, identity, and resistance.
Whenever I encounter the intersection of art and activism, I am irresistibly drawn to it, compelled to engage with it on a deeper level. We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law by Yxta Maya Murray (Cornell University Press) explores the intersection of art, activism, and legal reform, focusing on women of colour and queer artists of colour whose practices fuse creative expression with direct political action. Murray examines “artivism”, a form of creative resistance rooted in the civil rights and feminist movements and extended through struggles for disability, immigrant, and queer rights. Defined by protest, rebellion, and resistance to systemic abuse, artivism seeks to challenge and transform not only societal norms but also the structures of law itself. Combining oral histories with sharp analyses, Murray reveals the potent political and aesthetic meanings embedded in their practices. The book’s strength lies in its exploration of how artivism interrogates and reimagines American law. Murray demonstrates how these artists use their work to represent the lived tragedies of marginalised communities, articulating legally suppressed emotions and demanding accountability. Murray’s most compelling moments emerge when she examines specific legal cases to illustrate how lawyers might learn from artivists to refine their own analyses. Yet, she leaves an essential question unanswered: how can artivism meaningfully enter and operate within the formal structures of American courts? This omission underscores the complexities of bridging artistic expression and legal reform, leaving readers to ponder the practical pathways of such integration. Despite this gap, We Make Each Other Beautiful is a singular achievement, offering a unique lens on the transformative potential of artivism.
Photography – A Queer History edited by Flora Dunster and Theo Gordon (Ilex Press) explores the crucial role of photography in shaping queer identities and how queer culture has influenced the art form across ten diverse themes, from documentary to performance, landscape to abstraction, and visibility to militancy. Featuring over 140 photographers and extended profiles on 79 key artists, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Joan E. Biren, Ajamu, and Zanele Muholi, it offers a broad, intergenerational, and transnational history of queer photographic practices. Alongside canonical figures like Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, and Peter Hujar, the book highlights lesser-known and emerging artists such as Laurence Philomene and Lorenzo Triburgo, who bring new perspectives from a trans/non-binary viewpoint. Other practitioners, like Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Honey Lee Cottrell, have influenced lesbian and gay communities but remain underappreciated in mainstream art circles, offering a more expansive view of queer photographic history. Rather than a linear narrative, the book delves into the varied and sometimes uneven ways LGBTQ+ sexuality and politics have manifested in photographic cultures globally. This work provides a much-needed contribution to the field, emphasizing the diverse and evolving nature of queer art.
In Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography (Thames & Hudson), the authors Zorian Clayton, Lydia Caston and Hana Kaluznick propose nothing less than a radical reimagining of photographic history. Drawing extensively from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s archives, the book constructs a visual narrative that challenges the conventional, heteronormative accounts of the medium. This is no mere catalogue of images; it is a study in shadows—lengthened, deepened, and rich with untold stories. What emerges is a tapestry of lives lived on the margins, not only through portraits of recognised queer figures but also via coded gestures, clandestine glances, and meticulously composed tableaux. These photographs, often created in times of repression, quietly resisted conformity, their subjects expressing alternative desires and forming covert communities. Importantly, the book avoids the reductive trope of ‘outing‘ historical subjects. Instead, it explores photography as a tool of queer self-expression, community formation, and subtle defiance. From the veiled eroticism of 19th-century portraiture to the bold, confrontational gaze of contemporary activists, Calling the Shots reveals the medium’s unique ability to capture and construct queer worlds.
Deeply Human: Global Queer Photography (Verlag Kettler) promises to continue the critical examination of contemporary queer photography. While details remain scarce, the book appears poised to build on the rich thematic ground established by earlier explorations of the medium. With a lineage that traces from Robert Mapplethorpe to Deborah Bright, it positions itself as an essential guide to the evolving canon of queer photography. At its core, Photography – A Queer History interrogates how the medium has been wielded to capture, construct, and expand the very idea of ‘queer.‘ Through thematic essays and artist-centred texts, it charts the medium’s role in forging queer identities and communities, often in the face of profound cultural hostility. It asks critical questions: How has photography advanced the fight against LGBTQ+ discrimination? How have artists developed a distinctly queer aesthetic? And how has the production and circulation of images fed both the queer desire for representation and the formation of transnational solidarities? Spanning historical and national contexts, the book assembles the work of 84 artists, weaving together canonical images with fresh perspectives from emerging photographers. The result is a dialogue across generations, revealing the diversity and complexity of queer lives and aesthetics. By connecting thematic concerns—ranging from visibility and eroticism to activism and kinship—it offers a nuanced map of photography’s queer potential.
Steve Schapiro, James Baldwin dancing the “hitchhike” with a CORE worker, New Orleans, 1963. Purchase with William W. Collins (Class of 1953) Print Fund. © Steve Schapiro, courtesy of Fahey Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
It’s no secret that I have long admired James Baldwin. So, when God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin, edited by Hilton Als (Dancing Foxes Press and the Brooklyn Museum), was published to mark the 100th anniversary of Baldwin’s birth, it felt like an essential and poignant tribute. When James Baldwin died in 1987 at the age of sixty-three, he left behind a body of work as multifaceted as the man himself. Novels, essays, poems, and film scripts stand as testaments to an artist whose literary achievements were inseparable from his activism. Baldwin, a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, was a voice of the civil rights movement—a voice that strove to reconcile the personal ‘I‘ of the author with the collective ‘We‘ of his people. God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin, offers a kaleidoscopic tribute to Baldwin’s legacy. The book assembles essays by an impressive roster of contributors, including Jamaica Kincaid, Teju Cole, Barry Jenkins, Darryl Pinckney, and Als himself. Together, these writers craft a mosaic that mirrors Baldwin’s protean voice while interrogating his singular contributions to literature, cinema, theatre, and Black critical studies—including his exploration of queerness.
The book builds on the 2019 exhibition of the same name, curated by Als at the David Zwirner gallery in New York. That show juxtaposed works by Baldwin’s contemporaries—such as Beauford Delaney, whom Baldwin described as his ‘spiritual father,‘ and Richard Avedon, his high-school classmate—with pieces by later artists including Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, and Marlene Dumas. As Als noted, the exhibition centred on ‘his relationship to artists that he didn’t know and the conversations he never had.‘ The volume’s twelve essays, written by nine contributors, offer a similarly expansive approach. Essays by Als, Pinckney, and Jenkins stand out for their deeply personal reflections. ‘In reading Baldwin,‘ Als writes, ‘I was listening to my secret voice, the voice of someone who wasn’t afraid to describe who he was and where he’d come from and what he’d seen.‘ Jenkins, who adapted Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk for the screen, observes that ‘all readers, filmmakers or not, receive Baldwin in images.‘ This attention to the visual is a recurring theme, underscoring the centrality of seeing—and being seen—in Baldwin’s work. The book also revisits Baldwin’s collaboration with Avedon in Nothing Personal (1964), where Baldwin’s elliptical prose is paired with Avedon’s stark, arresting photographs. This interplay between text and image is echoed in God Made My Face, which features works by Diane Arbus, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Beauford Delaney, Kara Walker, and others. These pieces, like Baldwin’s writing, explore the tensions between identity, visibility, and the search for connection.
Throughout my time at university, when I was often referred to as ‘Genet,’ I developed a keen awareness of African territories and their complexities. This formative experience shaped my understanding of the region, prompting me to engage with the political and cultural dynamics that have long been part of my worldview. The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power by Amy Sall and Yasmina Price (Thames & Hudson) offers a sweeping exploration of postcolonial and contemporary photography and cinema from Africa, presenting a nuanced portrait of a continent’s visual storytelling traditions. Curated by Amy Sall and Yasmina Price, the book combines archival images, interviews with photographers and filmmakers (or their associates when they are no longer alive), and essays by scholars, writers, and curators. The result is a deeply layered introduction to African photography and film, one that spans time, geography, and creative disciplines to illuminate ‘the breadth of the human condition and everything in between.’ While not explicitly framed as a queer text, The African Gaze gestures toward inclusivity, featuring the work of Samuel Fosso, whose bold, gender-bending self-portraits from the 1970s offer a rare glimpse into queer visual culture in Africa. Fosso’s playful, defiant exploration of identity is emblematic of the book’s larger ethos: a refusal to be confined by Western narratives or reductive notions of Africanness.
The book celebrates pivotal figures in African photography, from Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, whose iconic Bamako portraiture captured the optimism of post-independence Mali, to Sanlé Sory and Philippe Koudjina, whose ambulatory practices immortalised the exuberance of newly liberated nations. Earlier innovators, like Solomon Osagie Alonge, who developed glass plate negatives by kerosene lamp in 1930s Benin City, and Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, the first sub-Saharan African filmmaker, are also honoured, challenging the assumption that Africa’s photographic and cinematic histories began with mid-20th century modernity. In cinema, the book highlights the anti-imperialist stance of directors such as Sarah Maldoror, Ahmed Bouanani, Haile Gerima, and Flora Gomes, whose works dramatise decolonisation struggles. At the same time, canonical figures like Ousmane Sembène, Med Hondo, and Souleymane Cissé interrogate the future of African sovereignty, while Idrissa Ouédraogo and Abderrahmane Sissako craft films that balance political consciousness with intimacy, beauty, and experimentation. Sall acknowledges the gender imbalance in African filmmaking, with women like Burkinabé director Fanta Régina Nacro as notable exceptions in an otherwise male-dominated industry. Yet The African Gaze is not merely a catalogue of resistance. It is also a celebration of what that resistance has built: powerful aesthetic traditions that weave the personal with the political, the experimental with the historical. Sall’s concept of ‘an aesthetics of liberation’ is central here, underscoring how African artists use the lens not just to challenge their fetishisation by the West but to reclaim a ‘right to look as a right to be, and to be seen.’
Reynaldo Rivera, Richard Villegas Jr., friend, and Enrique, Miracle Mile, 1996
A special mention and exception: Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City (Semiotexte) was not published in 2024, but I mention it because of the fantastic exhibition I saw this year in MOMA PS1, New York, titled Reynaldo Rivera: Fistful of Love/También la belleza. Accounts of queer and trans people of colour in mainstream culture often fall into a predictable pattern: narratives of trauma, theatricality, and racialised spectacle dominate, leaving little room for the quieter, less performative aspects of life. Paris Is Burning comes to mind as a touchstone for this representational quagmire—a film that, while groundbreaking, reinforced the expectation that queer and trans lives must always be extraordinary, always teetering on the edge of drama or despair. Rivera’s photography offers a striking counterpoint to this tradition. His work refuses to be subsumed by the narrative stakes that so often confine portrayals of queer and trans lives of colour. Instead, he turns his lens toward the ordinary—the deleted scenes, as it were, of lives lived not in trauma, but in joy, contemplation, and the beautiful banality of the everyday. His photographs are imbued with a quiet defiance, inviting viewers to linger not on pain or spectacle, but on smiles, silliness, and fleeting moments of human connection. Presented as a coffee-table book, Rivera’s collection might initially appear to embody a certain decorative irrelevance—an object to be glanced at, flipped through, and forgotten. Yet this designation, often dismissed as trivial, is precisely its power. The book is an artefact of the everyday, a reminder of who came before us, the communities that sustain us, and the labour still required to dismantle the systems that perpetuate poverty, displacement, violence, and premature death for queer and trans people of colour. Rivera’s images capture the highs and lows of the mundane: a tender embrace, a drink shared in laughter, a stage performance fashioned with garments on a budget. These are not scenes of escape, but of presence—moments where joy and struggle coexist, where life is neither fully worry-free nor wholly defined by suffering. The photographs insist on a truth often overlooked: that the ordinary is not a consolation prize for those who cannot access grand narratives, but a site of splendour in its own right. The collection is, at its core, a document of what Rivera calls ‘quotidian radiance.‘
These 2024 books enrich the expanding field of queer photography and art, offering a wide range of perspectives and representations of queer experiences. Through both historical and contemporary lenses, they explore the complexity and diversity of queer identities, shedding light on underrepresented voices and challenging conventional narratives. By spotlighting groundbreaking artists and photographers, these works contribute to a deeper understanding of how queer culture has shaped and been shaped by visual art, providing critical insights into the ongoing evolution of queer expression and representation.
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