Live... by Edward

After all the weeks of work we put into creating our portraits, it was pretty exciting to finally see them, in all their giantness, up on the walls around brighton.

 

I was kinda surprised that when I found my poster I actually felt very self conscious. There are perhaps levels of being out.

 

Being out as trans to your friends and families is one thing, being out as T in a room of LGBT people who assume you're G is another thing. Having your face on the wall facing the seafront, identifying yourself as queer - thats a whole new world of out.

Taking part in the project was sometimes difficult for me, but only because I was unsure of how I fit the word 'queer' into my life, and how to find images that showed that. I didn't find the idea of being out as queer difficult, until I was on the side of a building.

Not that I regret doing it. I am just extremely lucky, that I have not faced intimidation on a regular basis because of my identity. I came out at my own pace, in my own time. I am unused to feeling exposed.

Honestly... by Matt

The second batch of indoor photos took place on Saturday 09 November at the New Writing South workshop. In fact, it was more of a redo of the previous week's work but with the benefit of experience thrown in to make the concept of 'queering the photobooth' more authentically photobooth.

Anthony had a different camera and a more arm-friendly flash box this time. I think it helped to draw the focus in to the sitter, having the flash propped up on top of the camera: It was more intimate, perhaps even a little claustrophobic - definitely more like a real photo booth.

Those who weren't sitting or keeping an eye on the flash were creating text for the fourth panel of the photobooth picture panel.

It's a difficult thing to encapsulate what 'queer' means to me. What I eventually came up with felt like, in the language I used, a corporate motivational poster, rather than a genuine reflection of how I feel. I think my sentiment that I am strong because of my queerness informs how I view myself and being queer, but it's not ultimately honest.

I'm going to be honest now: I am strong because I'm queer - I am queer because I'm strong. When I was young I was depressed and lonely but I was queer (well, gay) and I somehow knew that it would be okay deep down. I realise now just how lucky I was, having escaped persecution from the community I lived in, or being ostracised by my family, or worse ending it all because it was all too much to bear,
That's not to say I didn't experience any of this, just that it was never to the extent of the extreme stories we all hear about from LGBT groups or on sad stories in the news.

I was touched for a lot of my younger life by the black dog of depression and the one thing I clinged to on dark nights and foggy days was that I am queer and it helped me through. Genuinely. Honestly.
My parents, desperate to bring me out of that funk, helped me by sending me to The Priory when I was 26. It was consensual and it was kill or cure. Really. Honestly. I hated myself, apart from that molten core of queerness that kept me going. I gradually reconnected with the things that had given me strength and one of those things was music. I dug my hands into the Earth and drew strength from the music that had shaped me as a child and a teenager and that stirred up all sorts of memories, good and bad.

I met Andrew not long after I came out of The Priory. I was still attending counselling sessions and I was unemployed. I was in my larval stage when I met him and I quickly fell in love, revelling in the new-found emotional self that I had reconnected with. His glamorous lifestyle compared to my state of being unemployed yet hopeful for the future was a heady mix. When we decided to enter a civil partnership a couple of years later, I can truthfully say that we should have ended it there - but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It's easy to say these things with the benefit of hindsight but it's honestly how I feel.

Now I am me, confident in myself (not always, you understand - I am human), with a job that I love and possibly on the verge of a great love affair. I love and am loved (although I have yet to use the word - I am cautious still of repeating a pattern or jumping into something too soon), I have strong family ties and great friends. And there's so much more out there to experience - so many Worlds to conquer. I am the master of my own destiny. I make my own luck. Honestly.

Queer is me.
I am Queer.
I subscribe to a Queer politic.
I stand up for Queers.
I love being Queer.
Queer defines me.
I define Queerness.
We are lovers and friends.
We are bound by blood.
We are Queer through experience.
Honestly.

My arm hurts... by Matt

I've always been tall - it's a physical trait that has never escaped me. I used to be self-conscious of it, not helped by people peering up at me (even as a child) and asking me how the air is 'up there' or inquiring if my mother put my feet in grow-bags at night.

Hilarious and keen observations, obviously.

Being tall has its uses, once you grow out of the awkward stooping gait acquired by attending infant and primary schools that only cater to children of 'average or below' height. I can reach high shelves, see over things and other people, and for some inexplicable reason I am more likely to be asked to tackle the opening of a difficult jar of pickled onions at Christmas. I find that tea towels are the best method for the latter task.

I don't have any pictures of the process of taking portraits because my tallness was being utilised for one very important task: Holding up the light thingy as Ed so succinctly put in his blog post.

We were trying (and I think we succeeded in doing so) to capture the photobooth style that we had discovered was a most excellent fun  thing to do in the very first sessions of not going shopping. But where those snaps had been in the very forgiving black and white, these shots were to be in full colour.

I've certainly not shied away from taking pictures of myself, I even set it out as a challenge in my head to overcome my hatred of viewing pictures of me. My journey over the past year has been, at times, melodramatic to say the least. In fact I was chatting to a friend over WhatsApp the other day and he remarked that my life had become a bit 'Jezza Kyle' (Jeremy Kyle, in case you were wondering) of late.I used to fear chaos as I thought it marked me out as unable to cope but I'm slowly realising that the secret to chaos is to be within the eye of the storm as much as I can.

And so the seemingly mundane task of holding up flash box whilst all around me people chatted, took photos, were having their photo taken, adjusting tripods and lens focus, and making a lot of tea and coffee allowed me to relax and take stock of the project.

I'll admit that I've felt a lack of focus of late. I am no longer shackled by the camera, although I certainly see things in a new way. I can see a good photo opp where once before I would have sailed by and then cooed over someone else's photograph of the event.But I don't instinctively reach for the camera now. I can relax.

Saturday's session was a rekindling of the energy and enthusiasm that I felt in the first sessions of the project and I was buzzing that we were actually taking portraits. I felt part of the experience more than I ever have before. Certainly more than I did all those weeks ago when I felt irrelevant to the project and expressed my thoughts on Facebook.

I can't wait until this Saturday's session. We'll be doing it all over again and my arms will hurt a bit but it's totally worth it.

Third week already! ... by Edward

Bursting with ideas this week. Not all of them good. Some of them too big of course! How many costumes am I planning on buying for this project? How much new camera equipment? Stop that, I don’t need that. Must remember to keep it simple.

I have started to think about themes of identity and self and representation. Kinda big themes but also nice and open. I’ve got lots of room to explore those things. Lots of ideas, so I reckon I'll just see how they pan out. Take the photos and come back to them later and see what I’ve got. Take them all along to the group and see what the others make of them. It is very easy to edit your ideas in your head until you end up with nothing left.

This week’s theme: family. In our first session we all talked about "friends as family" in the queer community. So I'm thinking about that, and thinking about my own family too.
Who do I call "my family"?
And why?