10 Essential Stories That Illuminate Queer Lives

These Queer PhotoBooks Changed My Life
By Matthew Leifheit

Eleven curators, writers, and artists reflect on images of queer identity. From the early days of photography to the present, these books perform an intimate yet consummately public function: to let people know that they are not alone, that queers do have a history, that someone cared enough to write it down.

The Subversive Fantasies of Ren Hang
By Stephanie Hueon Tung

In tightly composed flash images, Chinese photographer Ren Hang—who passed away at the age of twenty-nine in 2017—pushed the limits of self-expression with his playful vision. Hang’s photographs “function as a form of play or performance,” Stephanie Hueon Tung writes, “in a place where any explicit declaration of same-sex orientation is still considered risky and nude photographs are routinely labeled pornographic.”

JEB’s Pathbreaking Archive of Lesbian Photography
By Sophie Hackett

From 1979 to 1985, American photographer and activist Joan E. Biren (JEB) traveled across the United States and Canada with a slide show that told an alternative history of photography with lesbians as central protagonists.

Rosalyne Blumenstein and the Art of Living
By Susan Stryker

A trans icon, Rosalyn Blumenstein was instrumental in popularizing the word transgender through her public-health work. In Aperture magazine’s “Orlando” issue, artist and activist Zackary Drucker photographs Blumenstein—a longtime muse and mentor—through the lens of limitlessness.

Clifford Prince King’s Intimate Photographs of Black Queer Men
By Marjon Carlos

Creating tender scenes with friends and lovers, the LA-based artist elevates aspects of queer Black friendship. Tender and sometimes raw, these photographs document ineffable moments of intimacy—offering a stirring vision of everyday ritual.

A Visual Record of Queer Experience in China
By Xuan Juliana Wang

For Lin Zhipeng, the photographer known as 223, taking photographs of his friends has become second nature. With an ever-present camera, the Beijing-based artist captures his friends kissing their lovers, running in the darkness, and eating noodles side by side—creating a visual record of friendship, travel, and queer experience.

“Gay Semiotics” Revisited

In 1977, Hal Fischer produced his photo-text project Gay Semiotics, a seminal examination of the “hanky code” used to signal sexual preferences of cruising gay men in the Castro district of San Francisco. For Aperture magazine’s “Queer” issue, Julia Bryan-Wilson spoke with Fisher about the origins of Gay Semiotics and how it has aged.

The Queer Black Artists Building Worlds of Desire
By Antwaun Sargent

Utopia is not a word that has been widely considered in the contemporary photographic works of Black queer artists. Much of their art has been flattened into the politics of representation. But in recent photographs by Shikeith, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, and others, queer acts and communal yearning flourish beyond the confines of mainstream gay culture.

Laura Aguilar Was a Proud Latina Lesbian, and She Flaunted It
By Yxta Maya Murray

A pioneer of envisioning Latinx identity, photographer Laura Aguilar was known for her images of unapologetically queer bodies. But what do the late artist’s emotional photo-text letters reveal about the craft of self-expression?

The Glamorous World of LA’s Vanished Queer Underground
By Jesse Dorris

Reynaldo Rivera’s photographs of trans women, drag artists, and Latinx scenesters are a thrilling account of 1990s-era nightlife. Unlike his peers at that time—such as Nan Goldin, Christopher Makos, and Alvin Baltrop—Rivera rejected, or was disinterested in, distance, filling his images with presence without flaunting his access.