“Queer-ish: Photography and the LGBTQ+ Imaginary”

Date/Time
Date(s) - 28th Oct 2023 - 15th Dec 2023
All Day

Location
The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery

Categories

• Exhibitions - Other Artists

 

 

 

 

FREE and open to the public during exhibitions
Wednesday through Sunday
Noon– 4p

FREE Opening Reception
Saturday 28th October
5-7p

 

Curated by interdisciplinary artist and Scripps College Fletcher Jones Chair in Art Ken Gonzales-Day

“Early Queer heroes like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Bruce of Los Angeles, Christine Jorgensen and Annie Sprinkle are just a few of the many people who helped shape the Queer imaginary,” Gonzales-Day said. “The use of ‘-ish’ in the exhibition’s title is a playful gesture, recognizing the precarity and fluidity of gender and sexual identities as well as the complexity of human sexuality.”

This exhibition highlights Gonzales-Day’s personal collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century vernacular photographs—snapshots of everyday life and subjects—depicting people who may have identified as LGBTQ+.  Organized thematically, the exhibition explores the relationship between photography and what Gonzales-Day calls the “Queer imaginary,” a critical space he describes as “exploratory, precarious, celebratory, potentially unseen and subject to change.”

These images encourage viewers to consider the link between photography, representation, and LGBTQ+ communities, as well as the role of the photograph in shaping notions of Queer identity.

 

Works included by:
Laura Aguilar, Bruce of Los Angeles, Rick Castro, Claude Cahun, Tammy Rae Carland, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, Naima Green, John K. Hillers, Taizo Kato, Bob Mizer, Pierre Molinier, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Catherine Opie, Marcel Pardo Ariza, Pau S. Pescador, George Quaintance, Pacifico Silano, Annie Sprinkle, Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, and Austin Young. It will also highlight works by Scripps alums Ohan Breiding ’06 and Molly Landreth ’01, as well as by Gonzales-Day.

FREE Gallery Talk + Tour with Professor Ken Gonzales-Day 
“Shaping the Queer Imaginary”
Wednesday 8th November
4p