GLR May-June 2025

Is There a ‘Queer Eye’?

I N LIGHT OF the censorship battles that the queer community has faced in bygone eras, the Trump Administra tion’s recent acts of scrubbing gov ernment websites of key parts of our history have created an unwanted sense of déjà vu. Our shared sense of history is al ready fragile enough. While the concur rence is unintended, the arrival of Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography

from 1962), and Andy Warhol (the Sticky Fingers album cover from 1971). But there are also images I had never laid eyes on be fore. Eddie Squires’ series of scrapbook photos and various other ephemera from 1975 to ’77 offer distinct glimpses of cruisy London. It’s a pleasing time warp into pre AIDS gay urban culture “compiled with love by a gay science fiction fan.” This volume also makes space for chap

M ATTHEW H AYS

CALLING THE SHOTS A Queer History of Photography by Zorian Clayton with Lydia Caston and Hana Kaluznick Thames & Hudson. 239 pages, $60.

ters focussing on specific artists. The London-based photogra pher Sunil Gupta’s images of New York in the 1970s are highlighted. One appears to show a couple out for an afternoon stroll; others have a far more sexual vibe. In an interview, Gupta recalls: “The great thing about New York City was that every street corner was different, so it was very exciting. One day I re alized that Christopher Street was kind of my tribe. I was going there all the time because I’d never seen so many gay men in

couldn’t be more timely. This gorgeous coffee table book fea tures a stunning collection of photos of queer import, carefully chosen by Zorian Clayton from the considerable collection of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In her introduction, Clayton acknowledges the weight that a label like “queer” can have, quoting the renowned photographer Catherine Opie: “I will wave a rainbow flag proudly, but I am not a singular identity.” Opie captured early 1990s alternative

public in the daytime before, so I began to photograph them to the point where it super seded the other streets.” The trans photographer Cassils is also featured, giving space to their transgressive, arresting images of naked trans bodies. Cas sils discusses the complexities and contra dictions inherent in the increased visibility of trans people: “This idea that representation is enough is just not the case. It stems from a sort of fascist ideology where you give peo ple the power to have this idea of representa tion and freedom, yet at the same time don’t give them their rights; there is a sense of agency that doesn’t hold true. Visibility is made all the more dangerous in a world of heightened polemics and polarization. The more you make yourself visible, the more you make yourself vulnerable.” With a keen eye to history, the book is punctuated by a chapter (“Beyond the Frame”) that analyzes experimental work.

Lola Flash. Stay Afloat, Use a Rubber , 1993.

“Experimental techniques have allowed artists to break out of the confines of photographic representation and empowered them to ascribe their own subjective meaning to the works they create,” Kaluznick writes in her preface to the chapter. These more un usual images demonstrate “a refusal to conform to aesthetic mod els or be restricted by notional ideas of what a photograph is and can be.” It’s a fitting conclusion to the book, a nod to future pos sibilities for the queer community and for challenging forms of art that lie ahead. Calling the Shots is at once playful, engaging, humorous, poignant, and painful. This is a book that is both desirable and vitally necessary in a world where certain conservative forces are again ascendant and eager to render us invisible. Each page feels like a welcome act of defiance.

erotic culture, only to subsequently find herself “boxed into shows only about sexuality.” Clayton recognizes the dilemma but defends looking at photography through a queer lens, not ing sensibly that one’s life work and one’s sexuality “do not have to be mutually exclusive.” The book is arranged along six themes titled “Icons,” “Staged,” “Body,” “Liberty,” “Making a Scene,” and “Beyond the Frame.” The expected luminaries are included, among them George Platt Lynes ( NudeBoy from 1937), Pierre et Gilles ( Le Mystère de l’Amour from 1991), Ruth Bernhard ( In the Box Matthew Hays is co-editor of the Queer Film Classics book series (McGill-Queen’s University Press) and teaches media studies at Mar ianopolis College and Concordia University in Montreal.

TheG & LR

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