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TToday, waking up after a big night, no evidence can be good evidence. Maybe the bar lights were so dim and the music was so loud that cell phones (and the outside world) were forgotten for a few happy hours. Motion cameras: empty.
However, a new photo book titled Sex, Clubs, Misfits: Exploring Queer Nightlife offers a fascinating defense of the traditional practice of cheeky photos taken in and after the club. The anthology, written by writer and London dancefloor regular Amelia Abraham, takes an in-depth look at Night photography from the 1960s to the present day, embracing the struggles of documenting some of the most difficult, disturbing and political aspects of poverty. Contributions from artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Sunil Gupta and Living in LaBeija emphasize how color is not a tool for social expression but also a memory and art form in itself.
“The book is underpowered and driven by emotion,” explains Abraham. “I wanted it to feel like night.” The selection of images – from continents, decades and styles – is cacophonous. Continuous videos, studio photos, and a Grindr poster take readers on a non-linear dance through the game of queer sociality.
The book avoids going after dark, with the first “sex” scene featuring naked, face-in-crotches and hands-in-pants scenes. One of the most effective pictures was shot by Phyllis Christopher in San Francisco in 1991. A woman in tights squints in a back alley, in a mostly male-only area.
There is a cheekiness to some of the photo choices and placement. Roxy Lee, the proud photographer of London’s Adonis party, presents photos of people in club clothes. Her picture of a dog in a dress is an impossible picture to close the “sex” section. A 1995 photograph taken by Tillmans at the beginning of the “club” episodes shows a rat running into a stormy river. Is this a metaphor for a difficult night’s sleep?
Ajama famous gay scene artist in London, whose work appears several times in the book, says that “many of us (his people) may be looking for sex. to be known but ridiculed for our sex values.” And the book’s greatest strength is its dedication to celebrating “action against humanity”, as Abraham puts it. For readers who know what it means to be unable to hold hands in public, there is universal joy in the embrace of the dancefloor, whether in a rough gay club in Poland, as shown by Agata Kalinowska, or a house party in Salta, Argentina, where the prostitute Vanessa Sander sleeps with her boyfriend.
The most important kiss is on the cover of the book, seen through a peephole-esque cutout in a bright red jacket. The 1978 photo is Meryl MeislerTwo Women Hugging on the Floor Near the Feet of Jupiter, Les Mouches, NY, shows Abraham’s mission to change the history of nightlife that often focuses on white men. “I loved the idea of recreating the glory hole,” he says of the holes that are punched in the walls of toilet cubicles so that a man can have sex anonymously with his partner. “Why don’t we look and see the joy of womanhood again?”
A generous selection of images from Pictures of LaGrace Volcano‘s archive’s archive women’s meetings in leather in London. Another fascinating section brings previously unpublished images from archives in Mexico City and Buenos Aires – films from the 1980s full of make-up, stunts and Carnaval stunts.
Back in 1968, when Esther Newton was doing her PhD in sociology, stupidity was a disease, not a trait. However, she decided to document the queens of the Midwest in a series called Mrs. Camp: Women’s Followers in America. These photos have the air of John Waters: beehive hair, blue lips and a drunken demeanor that transports you to a gay bar of the middle ages. Like most Sex, Clubs, Critics pictures, they are all archetypes and blueprints for how stupid one can be.
However the theorist is very passionate McKenzie Wark argues that there is a possible violence in the photography of the night, he argues: “We talk about taking a picture or taking a picture… Many modern clubbers argue about being caught – and placed – in party pictures. But beyond being a fan, Wark also shows how people who change see pictures differently. “We became different from what we were before. If you are sexually active, you know the problem here.”
Politics, and a little bit of danger, define the Discord sector. The glossy photo of dancer and 80s kid Michael Clark, shot by DJ Jeffrey Hinton, looks like a fashion campaign but shows the consequences of the “gay-bashing” Clark has received. A clever juxtaposition of images of Jean-Marc Armani at the Act-Up Paris meetings in the 1980s includes the anti-Aids slogan “AIDS is a disco”. “I wanted to put pictures of the protests together with the party’s pictures,” said Abraham. “Anger is liberation.”
In the introduction, Brontez Purnell, a Bay Area punk songwriter, sums up the theme: “Nighttime wasn’t just clubs, it was the parks we went to, the houses we went to do drugs until the sun came up.” In Abraham’s vision, so are the residents, the dinner parties are the last care. Purnell asks the reader to think about another place that is about to die: a diner or a cafe. Purnell remembers his first job as a waitress at a San Francisco nightclub.
In the “sex” section, there’s a 1997 photo of topless Amanda Lepore at Florent’s, a clubber who lived in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District long before gentrification. My first gay night out usually ended at the IHOP on 13th Street in Philadelphia, with phone numbers handed out on napkins between booths. I don’t have pictures of those nights but I wish I did. In many ways, the different genres of recording that are Sex, Clubs, Discord are closely related to pleasure and pain, panache and protest, which define queer activities. As Abraham says: “That is our life.”
