The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly – By JB

As a queer person (and even more so a Trans person) coming out is a very personal affair. However, coming out to people often means that a kind of queer ambassadorship is thrust upon you, whether you like it or not.

To the straight people drunkenly asking how you have sex in the nightclub smoking area, or the confused elderly lady on the bus you inadvertently blurted to, you are now the spokesperson for your entire community. The pressure is on.

Much like a Briton abroad - stuck cringing amongst a rowdy flock of topless, sunburnt, lager filled aggressors, hoping that the poor Spaniards subjected to the unsightly crowd won’t judge all 63.23 million of us - LGBT people come in all shapes, sizes, colours, and levels of agreeability.

It’s unsettling when you meet an LGBT person with disagreeable views and opinions, because you imagine all of the people who have met them and made a judgement about the entire community based on their utterings.

It’s not the job of the LGBT community to be perfect all the time, it’s the job of everybody else to humanise us more, and in doing so – see us as individuals.

When I began taking photos for this project I was going through a period of great personal change and reflection, and I found that as I did this my photos moved away from the scenes of the city and it’s vibrant and diverse queer community, to close ups of myself and my loved ones, pieces of great self-expression and vulnerability.

I felt the pressure release as I abandoned the idea of trying to represent a group of people I couldn’t hope to capture, even with the best camera on earth. I began to represent myself, and did so with much more success. While these pieces speak a lot about me and my experiences of being queer - experiences I share in common with many of my friends - not all queer art is ambassadorship, and it should not be treated as such.

Generalisations based on what we say, what we do, and even what we create are not helpful, and can be dehumanising. While art often brings us together on common ground, one thing I am most proud of the queer community for is its ability to celebrate difference. I want people to look at our photos – together and individually – as a cross section of the community. The good, the bad, and the ugly reside here; and we are just like you, in that we are not the same at all.

A post by JB

As someone with a keen interest, but little experience in photography, and a similarly keen interest in queer politics and history, this project seemed perfect for me. I was super excited when I knew I was able to be a part of it. Although I had thought a little about what pictures I might like to take I tried not to focus my thoughts too much until I had met Anthony and discussed the project with the group.

Typically late, I walked in on an interesting group of individuals all of whom felt an affinity to the word queer and wanted to be a part of this project as much as me. As we each shared three photos that told ‘our story’ we ended up getting a metaphorical snapshot of each person’s life and heard some moving and funny stories. As with most queer activities in Brighton, there were some friends and familiar faces. Our stories, although they spanned many miles and decades, seemed to be bound up by the shared experience of being queer, some of the pictures were intimate and political, and very much relatable.

Anthony was friendly, energetic, and thoughtful. After seeing some of his work I was more excited than ever to be involved. I really enjoy portraiture but have always really struggled to take portraits myself. I particularly loved his work with the Eastern European women in Belfast and would be over the moon if some of our photos managed to say as much as theirs did. As we discussed queer representation in society and how curators represent LGBT people, we noticed that in some ways our small group wasn’t representative. Although it’s a shame no BME people are involved with the project, I was pleased that we were all aware that our work would be missing this important perspective.

As we considered the themes we hoped to cover we talked about friends and family, places, culture, language, and politics. One thing we scrawled down particularly caught my attention: ‘Does queer life happen in queer places?’ It occurred to me that the moments I feel my queer identity most strongly in, are not queer places at all, but are specific places all the same. I have decided to use this week to photograph the places a feel most queer in such as my doctors surgery, the public toilets, and I may even go back to visit my old church to take note of my difficult time there.

We are due to meet again in just over a week and I’m already looking forward to discussing the project more and undoubtedly getting more inspiration.

Jess Bayliss

Welcome to not going shopping

not going shopping charts the process of the artist Anthony Luvera working with eleven people to create a photographic work for Queer in Brighton, a project that celebrates cultural heritage of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in Brighton and Hove. 

The work made by Anthony and 

Jess Bayliss
Raphael Fox
Ten Harber
Sarah Hebben
Harry Hillery
Kelly McBride
Luc Raesmith
Matt Robinson
Kate Turner
Ed Whelan
Charlie Wood

will be shown in an outdoor citywide exhibition in Brighton from February 2014.

On this blog Anthony and the participants will share their experiences, observations, photographs and anything else they find interesting, as a way to document their work together.