NSFW | 25 LGBTQIA+ Film Photographers You Need to Know!
When I think of the LGBTQIA+ community: it is as diverse and varied as its image-makers. From Discrimination to Drag-queens, Erotica to Equality - LGBTQIA+ people have utilized the photographic arts to showcase and celebrate identities, icons, sub-cultures, and social progress. Analog photography has been a huge part of that history and has been created by some of the world’s most iconic lens-based artists. Hockney, Warhol, Mapplethorpe, Leibovitz, Muholi, and LaChapelle, to name a few, have created, captured, and curated the queer experience for a global audience.
As the community’s message for equity and acceptance continues, new factors emerge in the conversation. Diversity in the LGBTQIA+ community has become an issue of importance to not just represent individuals in front of the camera but also behind it. Diversity enhances creativity, new ways of thinking, understanding, and experiencing our world. Within my own work, I try to showcase a panopticon of male identities, a spectrum of body types, ethnicities, and ages so the viewer can hold their position and celebrate others. This article highlights the wonderful work being created by some amazing Analog image-makers which celebrates the diversity of technique, medium, and subject matter and the people who create it.
-Mark Francis Fenning
25 LGBTQIA+ Film Photographers You Need to Know!
Artist: Nicolas Stankova Velozo | Location: Châteauroux, France
Links: Website | Instagram
Originating from Châteauroux, Nicolas Stankova Velozo’s work explores his aspirations, fascinations, and desires of the male body. Perfectly posed in his grandparent’s house, Stankova Velozo’s elegantly reclining nude portraits capture men dreaming like a still life painting. For me, his work is so beautifully lit. It showcases the body in such a vulnerable state it evokes for me images of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; as if we have come across a beautiful figure and cannot look away.
Artist: Eugenio Schulz | Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Links: Website | Instagram
Eugenio Shulz is a young surrealist photographer based in Mexico City. His process combines different analog and digital techniques to manipulate and subvert the image for the viewer. Shultz’s work for me is beautifully cinematic and hauntingly ethereal. The images are polarising with equal amounts of horror and dreamlike wonder.
Artist: Robert Andy Coombs | Location: Miami, Florida
Links: Website | Instagram
Miami-based artist Robert Andy Coombs' photography explores the intersections of disability and sexuality. Themes of relationships, caregiving, fetish, and sex are depicted and explored throughout. I find his work jovial, risky, and adventurous. Through Polaroid imagery, his self-portraits represent the disabled body in queer spaces and present it as something to be adored, admired, and accepted. A truly inspiring image-maker.
Artist: Clifton Mooney | Location: Brooklyn, NY
Links: Website | Instagram
Polaroid photographer Clifton Mooney utilizes instant images to capture the male body. With the overuse of Photoshop and digital editing, the integrity of the film is what draws Mooney to the medium. What I find so interesting about Mooney’s work is that men are laid bare in fragmented moments. The sheen on a torso, a tattooed bicep, or the curve of a buttock are snapped in a playful yet seductive manner.
Artist: Space Kid | Location: Madrid, Spain
Links: Website | Instagram
Space Kid’s work is focused on the experimental nature of analog film. Macrophotography, double exposures, street art, and portraits are the pillars of his work. I love the softness and home-movie quality of Space Kid’s photographs. He captures a nostalgia-driven world of youth culture in duotone and black and white.
Artist: Craig Waddell | Location: Newcastle, England
Links: Website | Instagram
Craig Waddell is a queer British photographer. Exploring traditional techniques his work investigates contemporary issues surrounding queer narratives and looks to establish their visibility in social history. What I like about his work is the construction of the images; pushing the boundaries of queer image-making from performative or erotic, Waddell’s portraits are regal and dignified. His painterly-like compositions look as if they could be found in any classic portrait collection.
Artist: Tom Selmon | Location: London, England
Links: Website | Instagram
Tom Selmon is a photographer with a vested interest in nude and erotic photography. What I find so powerful about Selmon’s work is his dedication to the challenge of body censorship in contemporary culture. Selmon’s queer images pose serious questions of identity, narrative, and intimacy. Spending over a decade working with people his work in now translated onto paper through his debut magazine, SENSORED.
Artist: Michel Delsol | Location: Paris France
Links: Website | Instagram
Parisian-born Photographer Michel Delsol, captures portraits of actors, musicians, writers, and artists across the world. His book Edges of the Rainbow: LGBTQ Japan is a documentary photography series exploring the mostly unknown world of queer Japan. I find his work a visual anthropological study of sexuality, identity, and humanity. My favorite thing about Delsol’s photographs is how they are captured in urban, domestic, and rural spaces. Highlighting the personal and making it universal whilst widening the network of diverse identities.
Artist: Ahmad Naser Eldein | Location: Jerusalem, Palestine
Links: Website | Instagram
Palestinian photographer Ahmad Naser Eldein’s work tackles representations of queer and political identities. Through his portraits, he aims at capturing the human physique that reflects expressions of emotions and states of mind. What I enjoy about Eldein’s Polaroids is the anonymity of his subjects. Headless, distorted, or cover faces make the viewer question the identity of the figure and reflect upon our own sense of self-actualization.
Artist: Merecedes Nelson | Location: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Links: Website | Instagram
Merecedes Nelson’s photographs glimpse into the mystical, surreal, and strange world of the everyday. What I love about Nelson’s "souped" photographs is the kaleidoscope of colors that make the images otherworldly. Through chemical manipulation, she opens up parallel realities, for us to witness and enjoy.
Artist: Leo Xander Foo | Location: NYC, New York
Link: Instagram
Leo Xander Foo is a nonbinary trans photographer of Chinese and Peruvian descent. Playing with a fluid lexicon of passion and identity, his work revolves around voracious yet intimately queer portraiture. What I find personally fascinating with Foo is the small details they highlight. The chain on a neck or a tan line, helping to illustrate the body in a soft and yet subtle manner.
Artist: Michael Joseph | Location: NYC, New York
Links: Website | Instagram
NYC photographer Michael Joseph documents subculture through street portraiture. Joseph’s inspirations are drawn from interactions with strangers on city streets and aims to afford his audience the same experience through his unplanned and often p-close portraits. I love the strength and dynamic quality of his images. With our world of filters, fillers, and airbrushing, Joseph’s portraits are refreshingly clear in their directness.
Artist: Saad Metla | Location: Pakistan
Links: Website | Instagram
Pakistani artist Saad Metla combines Analog imagery with interactive multimedia. His philosophy is rooted in realism based on generational trauma, depictions of relatable characters/representation for black and brown people, and, most importantly, his intrinsic need to push empathy. What I love is how Metla is combining art and technology to create these digital assets. Showing how contemporary Analog film can be and how new artists are expressing the medium in interesting and innovative ways.
Artist: Ajamu Ikwe-Tyehimba | Location: London, England
Links: Website | Instagram
Ajamu Ikwe-Tyehimba is a London-based fine art photographic artist. His work unapologetically celebrates both black and queer bodies, the erotic senses, the pleasure as activism and difference. What I admire about Ajamu’s work is the diverse spectrum of black identities he captures. Both vivid and visceral these beautifully lit yet striking portraits empower the sitter and viewer alike.
Artist: Ben Malcolmson | Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Links: Website | Instagram
Northern Irish visual artist Ben Malcolmson works within the parameters of photography, video, and sculpture exploring alternative photographic processes with relation to his homeland and identity. I am a huge fan of his work, with his combination of figurative imagery and chemical abstraction. His work is expressionistic, making you reflect on the image, searching and discovering what lies within.
Artist: Alexis Ruiseco Lombera | Location: New York City, New York
Link: Instagram
Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera is a performance artist, writer, and director making work from the intersection between being non-binary and Latinx. What I love about Ruiseco Lombera’s work is the metamorphosis quality of their self-portraits. Showcasing diversity through multiple images, Ruiseco Lombera articulates the performative quality of identity and transformation and holds up a mirror to societal ideas of self-image.
Artist: Chabe Garcia | Location: Madrid, Spain
Link: Instagram
Chabe Garcia is a non-binary artist who sees photography as an emotional process, creating an image to transmit a feeling to the viewer. I find Garcia’s approach to street style documentary photography refreshingly clear with their subjects unfiltered and unstructured in their environments.
Artist: Iosune de Goñi | Location: Spain
Link: Instagram
Basque writer and analog photographer Iosune de Goñi’s work experiments with multiple exposure and film soup techniques. I like her combination of expired films and sophisticated colors palette that creates these fairy-tale-like woodland scenes, showcasing the female form as part of the landscape.
Artist: Guilherme Scaglione | Location: Brazil
Links: Website | Instagram
Brazilian analog aficionado Guilherme Scaglione takes a trial-and-error approach to image-making. I personally find Scaglione’s work to be refreshingly soft and romantic. Within our world of pin-sharp precision, their use of color and blur captures a small moment of beauty, that they encase for us to view upon and enjoy.
Artist: Mengwen Cao | Location: NYC, New York
Links: Website | Instagram
Chinese-born Mengwen Cao is a photographer, artist, and educator currently based in New York. As a queer immigrant, they use care and tenderness to explore spaces between race, gender, and cultural identity. I love Cao’s strong use of color within their portraits. Vibrant pinks, soft red, and chartreuse greens help envelop the subject creating a stunning representation of the sitter.
Artist: Vic Lentaigne | Location: London, England
Links: Website | Instagram
London-based photographer Vic Lentaigne’s view of the world is that of an avid collector. Cultivating an intimacy with her subjects Vic explores themes of gender fluidity, queerness, identity, and self-expression with a sense of quiet emotion. I admire how Lentaigne creates a sense of familiarity, tenderness, and closeness with her subjects. Creating this palpable connection with the viewer and image, making us part of the work and building connection and relationship through their art-making practice.
Artist: Meg Turner | Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Links: Website | Instagram
Meg Turner is a printmaker, photographer, and installation artist specializing in portraiture showing the world through a queer maximalist lens. I love Turner’s combination of storytelling with technical historical processes. Creating a narrative thread running through their work, Turner’s methodical alchemy unveils a queer cinematic experience they have curated and we, the viewer, get to unearth.
Artist: Dai Robinson | Location: Brooklyn, New York
Link: Instagram
Dai Robinson is a Brooklyn-based designer and photographer whose work explores photo transparencies and emulsion lifts in 2 and 3 dimensions. What I love about Robinson’s work is that it is found within the intersection between design and Analog photography. Creating bags that function as Polaroid photo-frames or a chain dress created completely from Polaroid film, I find his work inventive, futuristic, and resourceful taking the Polaroid and using it as a material in its own right.
Artist: Holly Falconer | Location: London, England
Links: Website | Instagram
Holly Falconer is a London-based photographer, hailing originally from the west country. Her work focuses on capturing groups and subcultures in the UK with a particular interest in the queer community. I enjoy Faloner’s diverse subjects in her portraits. Butch Lesbians, Drag-Queens, Asexuals, and celebrity icons are all captured under her striking lens Helping to not just represent the community but also highlight, celebrate and normalize it.
Artist: Kostis Fokas | Location: Athens, Greece
Links: Website | Instagram
Athen’s born Kostis Fokas, is a conceptual photographer whose artistic practice offers a discreet look at the body as a site of desire, fantasy, submission, and oppression. What I find so invigorating about Fokas’s work is that these images are not only beautifully lit in gorgeous locations, but they showcase moments of unaltered love and humanity in the gay community. Kissing, linked arms, lying on a beach, these photographs unapologetically celebrate the joy, magic, and emotion of human connection, attraction, and sex.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
@ Michael Behlen
Mark Francis Fenning is a Belfast-based visual artist working in photography, installation, printmaking, sculpture, bookmaking, and film. With a background in printmaking, he explored photographic techniques developing a passion for instant film. Known for his work with Polaroid he creates collages, joiners, Polaroid emulsion lifts, and transfers. His work is inspired by the ideas surrounding modern masculinity in contemporary culture; specifically, the male form, body image, and masculinity.
'The connective thread that binds all my work is the question surrounding identity and transformation. My focus has been on masculinity and how it is represented in contemporary culture. Through my art making practice I question how masculinity is represented and my work showcases men navigating this space’.
Connect with Mark Francis Fenning on his Website and on Instagram!
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