“Not complying with the rules of a heteronormative world is a deeply emotional, sometimes shattering and isolating experience” – Bérangère Fromont

The politics of visibility have long been the purview of portraiture for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, who have used the medium to provide evidence of their love and lives since its inception. As a visual strategy, photography has been a tool for radical coalition and solidarity, building and nurturing self-regard and togetherness. While portraiture as a mechanism may seem deceptively simple to a cis-heteronormative audience, existing through images is not just a survival strategy for Queer people. It is proof of existence in a world in which law and institutions continue to deny our fundamental human rights.

As Boulos’ work reminds us, portraiture has been central to the ideology of resistance. Yet, the tension between visibility and safety is increasingly complex, especially in the context of social media, where identities and personal information can be easily accessed. “Since the revolution, I’m very conscious that images can put us in danger,” she explains. “It’s not the right time to bring the book to Lebanon. In the last month, politically charged, anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns have drastically reasserted that homosexuality is against the law and the consequence is the death penalty. We’ve also seen increased attacks by radical groups as intimidation tactics. It’s too risky for me and my collaborators to be seen now.”

The personal is political

Boulos is not alone in her safety concerns. The UK prime minister regularly promotes preaching anti-trans rhetoric and health bans in the United States are fundamentally altering the material reality of transgender people. This summer, Italy removed the parenting rights of non-biological lesbian mothers, and Hungary instigated a law encouraging citizens to report same-sex families for violating the constitution; meanwhile, parts of Poland still uphold LGBT-free zones.

Despite the many hard-fought freedoms won over the last 100 years, the rise of the far right foreshadows a future in which the LGBTQIA+ community is increasingly marginalised in violent and insidious ways, rendering hyper-vigilance the only way of life. Where do we stand now? How are the politics of representation shifting? How does portraiture function as a care modality? And perhaps most pertinently, what does it mean to make work in an era in which visibility is both liberating and dangerous?

While the representation of the LGBTQIA+ community in culture is evolving, Queer image-makers are rarely recognised for their contribution, and most mainstream storytelling is still told from an outside perspective. “We are fetishised, objectified and routinely targeted by hate speech. How can we possibly build a sense of self in such conditions?” says French artist Bérangère Fromont, who uses her work to reclaim space and fill representational gaps. “I’m fond of the idea that Queers anywhere are responsible for Queers everywhere.”

In L’amour seul brisera nos cœurs, Fromont’s recent book, the artist celebrates dyke identities, creating an “archive of our memories, our imaginations and our dreams for the future”. The project, published by À La Maison Printing, presents a monochromatic patchwork of lesbian love through a playful exchange between Fromont’s images and poetic texts by Elodie Petit. Focusing on the representation of lesbians at the intersection of several forms of discrimination, the duo use gesture and proximity in their fight against Queer women’s erasure in wider culture.

“Not complying with the rules of a heteronormative world is a deeply emotional, sometimes shattering and isolating experience,” explains Fromont, who considers photography a space in which marginalised groups can share knowledge and build a survival network. “Staying in the shadows doesn’t have to be an obligation. I wanted lesbian love stories to be shown and enacted by people who experience it, for whom it is a physical reality.”

For the last four years, Jesse Glazzard has been documenting his transition in Testo Diary, a deeply personal exploration of his life after top surgery. Through the images, we witness Glazzard finding himself anew, with the loving support of his then-partner, Nora. The project was initially born out of boredom, during the London-based artist’s six-week recovery post-surgery. But over time it became more mission-led, an opportunity to address the lack of trans portraiture in the UK.

“We are living in a weird time,” says Glazzard. “We can exist freely but equally face so much backlash. On the one hand, the community is bigger now. It’s been powerful to witness the changes in my friends over the years as they are transitioning. But with greater visibility comes risk and hostility.” For many individuals, the journey to gender euphoria is not linear, and is deeply affected by sociopolitical contexts. “Some friends take testosterone, then they will go off it briefly. Even for me, sometimes I think I should go back because it’s so scary right now. This experience is just one of the reasons why we need to tell our own stories.”

Self-portraiture is just one facet of Glazzard’s practice. In Camp Trans, he collaborates with a community festival that exclusively hosts trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people in a safe space, encouraging joy and rest from the binary pressures of everyday life. In his latest work, Soft Lad, he reclaims the northern slur in a series of luscious portraits of transmasc individuals resting and relaxing at home and in nature.

“I’m only documenting the private spaces of people I’m close with, and most of the time, the work doesn’t become public. And if it does, it’s consensual,” says Glazzard of the delicate ethos of his practice. “I’m not sure I will ever be able to show the Camp Trans work, but it felt important to make it.” For Glazzard and others, building the archive and centring care in a practice is more important than showcasing the work, though it is work that also explodes our understanding of the linear, contained and sequential conventions of the cultural production of photography.

“As Queer people, we can’t wait for laws to change; for someone to tell us we can do certain things. We have to take chances, embrace our desires and express ourselves” – Janina Sabaliauskaitė

Create safe spaces

Contemplating modes of display and circulation which best serve the community is also integral to Devyn Galindo’s practice. A non-binary Mexihkah transdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, they opted to launch their first book in a space in which those who had participated would feel most comfortable. “I feel like I’ve been very centred on ‘by us, for us’ from the jump,” says Galindo. “I try to keep it more for the community, even to the detriment of my work being seen more broadly.”

While these values hold true for the artist, the rising violence across the US is also something they have experienced first-hand, and that has motivated a change in approach. “Right now, the work needs to reach beyond our community because we’re living in such an isolated echo chamber; the ramifications of that charted with the rise of hate crimes. I’m optimistic that if the work has a wider reach, it could create more safety and understanding about our community, instead of divisiveness.”

In God in Drag, a project Galindo has been working on since 2017, they explore their gender journey alongside their transmasc siblings in a multifaceted, intimate series made across the US. Like Glazzard, Galindo’s collaborators embody trans joy and speak to a new era of body positivity in which masculine femininity and feminine masculinity are not just seen but celebrated. In particular, God in Drag speaks to the sweet and tender friendships accompanying the tougher masculine aspects of taking testosterone, creating a remarkable contemporary portrait.

Galindo sporadically appeared in their previous bodies of work, but in God in Drag they centred themself as much as their collaborators, reconfiguring the power dynamics of the work. “I’ve hidden behind the camera for so long,” says Galindo. “The only way to push through this heightened fear is to create work where I can [also] see myself through the lens of my community.”

Being vulnerable in front of the camera is just one of the evolving aspects of creative practice for artists such as Galindo. The lateral experience of kin-building is also central, and goes beyond film and photography production to engage with all kinds of community work, from art collaborations to a monthly dance party. “I’ve been trying to think of all of my life as part of my art practice these days,” they explain. “The fear just motivates me to go even harder.”

Building community

For Queer artists, manifesting care goes beyond the politics of representation or their photographs alone. It is an intrinsic part of the work. Janina Sabaliauskaitė is an image-maker but also an educator and archivist, who curates festivals and runs a black-and-white darkroom in Newcastle for the Queer community. In her hands, photography is a tool for organising, as well as an act of resistance, reflecting her desire to build safe environments for creativity and play.

“Amazing things can happen when you empower somebody to use a camera or develop film and print pictures,” the Lithuanian artist says. “The most important thing is that people have the tools to start archiving their own lives.”

In Sending Love, an exhibition of Sabaliauskaitė’s work at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, earlier this year, she presented sensual and erotic collaborative photographs celebrating a sex-positive perspective on masculine femininity – a love letter to her transnational LGBTQIA+ community. The project features Sabaliauskaitė exploring her identity as both an immigrant and gender non-conforming lesbian, and is a provocation to listen to the experiences of Queer folks from a wider geography.

For Sabaliauskaitė, inclusion and collaboration are vital, and she is committed to participating in other photographers’ work as much as her own. She hopes this gesture of “building visibility together” will create a chain reaction, helping others feel safe and empowering them to take risks, to push the boundaries of how Queer bodies can be seen and represented. “I always make work with the intention that it will be visible,” she says. “First and foremost, because in Lithuania, there isn’t much. As Queer people, we can’t wait for laws to change; for someone to tell us we can do certain things. We have to take chances, embrace our desires and express ourselves.”

If the past is any indicator, the significance of today’s visions of Queer life will go unrecognised for years. Yet, these artists instinctively understand how vital it is to create a living archive of, and for, LGBTQIA+ people, and the endless and vital ways in which queerness is experienced and performed. Queer culture, like photography more generally, is entering an era in which the mechanics of cultural production are perhaps more meaningful than the final shot. As we contemplate the role of images in our lives, my focus has shifted from ‘Is this good?’ to ‘What might this do for someone?’

Hedging your bets

“At first, I didn’t think that being a photographer would be a sustainable [profession],” Rhiannon Adam says when I ask her how she started. “I tried to find ways into the industry that were more financially stable.” Adam began her career at the publisher Thames & Hudson, designing and marketing books. Over the years, she also ran a gallery, worked as an agent, started an imprint, authored three books, and hosted a BBC Radio 4 show – all the while remaining dedicated to her practice.

“People make this assumption that there’s one path to being a creative, and that’s going to art school,” says Adam. “I hedged my bets and learned about the industry through taking on various roles [within it]. In some ways, it’s been amazingly liberating and made me selfsufficient by giving me all the practical skills I needed as an artist.” Having such a wide-ranging set of skills meant that Adam was able to make the most of any smaller opportunity that came her way, particularly at the beginning of her career. “The willingness to get my hands dirty has been so formative,” she says. “There are many different ways to sustain a practice, and there is no shame in that.”

The stakes are high in Adam’s personal work, which demands time, flexibility and a sustained commitment to the cause over many years. She often works with remote communities that parallel her complex, nomadic upbringing. Her deeply personal projects interrogate the tension between utopia and dystopia. Forging an enriching and economically sound path enabled Adam to set up the right circumstances for her practice without being beholden to commissions and compromise.

Adam explains: “I could force myself to find 10 interesting things, write a lot of pitches, and spend my life doing that. But is that really what matters to me? Isn’t it better that I try to sustain my practice by staying true to my artistic vision, which is about making work that I think needs to be made, and tackling subject matter that is difficult and uncomfortable? I don’t work on projects where I’m just parachuting in and doing this thing and then leaving again. My whole life is this work, and I’m living it. I think [as artists] it’s important to give yourself the space and time to do that.”

“We have to start asking ourselves, what is the industry we want to create? Are we feeling fulfilled in this? And if not, how do we do things to change that? We all have a part in creating that future”- Rhiannon Adam

Know your worth

As a society, we are waking up to the pitfalls of glamourising overworking and wearing burnout as a badge of honour. Yet, for most artists creating and upholding boundaries to protect their work and wellbeing is an ever-evolving task. For Campbell Addy, one thing was clear: “You shouldn’t be able to use my work for free.”

“During my early days, I felt very overwhelmed,” he recalls. “I didn’t understand the industry and often had to go against my nature to one-up the system. I learned quickly that it was on me to uphold my value and that people will treat you better if there is a degree of separation.” Taking advice from a friend, Addy created a new email address and formed a new persona to start negotiating his fee. “Trying to make ends meet was draining at the beginning, especially when I was spread thin juggling a retail job and my photography without protection or support from an agent.”

Addy learned about the industry through multiple side hustles and used that to leverage his work. Shortly after graduating, he launched Niijournal and Nii Agency, born out of a desire to shift power in front and behind the camera, while cultivating space for his community to be together and build together.

“With Nii Agency, I learned about contracts, rates and usage fees. I then took this insight into my personal craft. As an agent, I found it much easier to ask questions because I was working on behalf of someone else. While it was stressful to wear so many hats, these side hustles gave me an entirely new perspective,” says Addy. “However, knowing my worth as a photographer also made negotiating harder.” Brands would laugh in Addy’s face when he named his fee, calling him ‘aggressive’, ‘ungrateful’ and ‘a diva’. “They’d say, ‘We’re doing you a favour.’ It was degrading, and comments like that break you down,” he recalls.

Creative solutions

Despite the mental turmoil, Addy has built a successful photography career straddling art and fashion in just nine years, working globally for Vogue, Time and The Wall Street Journal. He crafted his personal style, understood his worth, and strategically utilised his resources to create opportunity and influence. Understanding the need to produce images with high production values and a minimal set-up was vital to avoid racking up debt in his early days.

Addy explains: “As a photographer, you must be savvy as you are financially responsible for the entire production. I remember finding these stunning early portraits by Inez van Lamsweerde lit with a lamp in her house. That stayed with me for a long time. It pushed me to be experimental; I’ve used Ikea lamps, lighting from a TV, and an oven at one point – not everything has to be a huge, expensive set-up.”

Lessons in starting over

As a first-generation Iranian-American, the pressure to be successful was drilled into Sinna Nasseri from a young age. The self-taught artist, whose sharp and intimate storytelling for publications such as Interview and The New York Times offers a mirror to contemporary society, is relatively new to the industry. Until 2018, Nasseri worked as a successful yet unfulfilled lawyer for one of New York’s most prominent firms. He found photography through improv music, inspired to document the energy of the musicians during their late-night shows. Yet, shifting professions and starting over was not easy.

“Being a photographer these days is about surviving,” Nasseri says. “Earning enough money to make the work you want is difficult. At the end of 2019, I wasn’t getting any assignments or making money. I reached a point where I felt that my work was getting to a good place, but I was frustrated at the lack of momentum. You look around at all these amazing, busy, successful artists, and you’re not [there with them]. It hurt. It was a tough time when I felt like I had no purpose – I was quite depressed.”

In January 2020, Nasseri borrowed his dad’s car and followed the Democratic primaries in the build-up to the US election. He did not have a plan; he just knew he needed to change tack. His risk-taking paid off when Vogue’s digital team discovered his project and commissioned his first story. Despite the Covid-19 lockdown, Nasseri shot nine stories for Vogue that year, setting him on an entirely new creative trajectory.

“I could have focused more on the art side of my practice, but I was getting deluged with commercial requests, and we live in a capitalistic world where making money feels pretty good” – Charlie Engman

Take time to reflect

On the flip side, the mid-career reflection point is a pertinent and often defining moment where you assimilate everything you have learned to think about what comes next. For Charlie Engman, it has been a time to metabolise his experience and evaluate mistakes, while remaining open to new modes of making.

“I could have been slower, and I could have said no to more things,” says Engman, whose career trajectory, contrary to the typical long slog of the majority of photographers, developed very fast. The New York-based artist’s inimitable style met the moment of the 2010s. It caught the attention of high-end and commercial fashion brands, giving him financial security and creative cachet early on. While he worked intensely for several years, he did not have an agent, and managing every production by himself took its toll.

“I was travelling worldwide, so I was booking my flights, hotels and teams,” Engman explains. “The pace was intense, and I was a wreck. I didn’t know how to manage a photo career. I’d never assisted anyone and never intended to be a photographer. I realise now that many of my mistakes come from not putting my foot down and respecting my position. I should have been clearer about what I needed to do a good job rather than taking the path of least resistance.”

Engman continues: “I do have feelings of missed opportunity and fantasy regrets that I could have focused more on the art side of my practice, but I was getting deluged with commercial requests, and we live in a capitalistic world where making money feels pretty good. Now, I’m trying to build healthy boundaries around incoming requests while also realising my own work that isn’t in service to any notion of career.”

Imagining new futures

So what now? Over time, the hope is that radical transparency will bring us together, reveal blind spots and dismantle the untold truths that hide between perception and reality. And yet, if we want to redefine our creative culture and forge new ways to build artistic lives, we must show up daily to dismantle the status quo and embrace incremental change. “We have to start asking ourselves, what is the industry we want to create?” says Adam. “Are we feeling fulfilled in this? And if not, how do we do things to change that? We all have a part in creating that future.”

Rhiannonadam.com

 campbelladdy.com

@strange.victory

charlieengman.com

“Growing up in the suburbs in the 90s, there wasn’t much to do. The TV was super important in our house,” says Escobar, explaining the roots of her fascination with visual storytelling. “We watched films constantly. Going to the video club every weekend was an important ritual. We would rent one movie and watch it 10 times. I’d replay scenes to the point that the story took over my mind. I would start to feel like I lived inside the movie, deeply relating to, or aspiring to be, the characters.”

Making poetry out of collisions is the beating heart of Escobar’s work: blending high and low culture, reality and fiction, the mundane and the fantastical. She describes her process as “intuitive”, following her ideas through even when the outcome is unclear. In addition to cinema and travel, people-watching shapes her work. “Walking the streets is a vital part of my approach,” she says. “Whether I’m travelling somewhere new or in familiar territory, the thing I love the most is watching people live. I’m particularly interested in women’s lives, their strength and sexuality. Essentially, I create the characters I want to be.”

“I’m particularly interested in women’s lives, their strength and sexuality. Essentially, I create the characters I want to be”

In Familia, a recent cover shoot and a short film for Vogue Portugal, Escobar explores the meaning of family in an uncertain world. The artist street-cast people resembling her mother, sister, grandmother and cousins for the project, set in Seville, Spain, in a personal tribute to her roots. She describes the shoot as a portrait of the “Andalusia of my memories”; an attempt to distil the romantic way she saw her family as a child. The film, which fuses flamboyant fashion and familial bonds, speaks to the way habits, behaviours and beliefs are imprinted over generations.

“Lou’s images transport me into a fascinating, timeless world,” says Maya-Ines Touam, one of BJP’s Ones to Watch last year, who nominated Escobar. “There is great reflection in her staging, nothing is random, yet everything feels familiar. I admire the energy of this raw and vibrant universe that she is creating.”

Straddling the line between insider and outsider has shaped Azadi’s work over time, leading to a recent shift away from traditional photojournalism. In the past, she reported on broken systems – such as the social and economic impact on the African American community in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, and gender-based violence in Uganda. However, in 2015 she pivoted from news to focus on the Middle East, forcing her to navigate policies of censorship and surveillance.

In Ordinary Grief, Azadi embarks on a personal and political reconciliation with Iran after 25 years of self-exile. Centring the lives of ordinary citizens, she describes quiet moments and reflective gestures as people desperately try to create new futures for themselves against all odds. Lingering on scenes of care, celebration and camaraderie, Azadi offers an intimate portrait of survival, illuminating humanity’s impulse to seek joy and cling to hope during treacherous times.

“In Persian lore, we often say grief is a familiar place,” explains Azadi. “Yet Iranians are very resilient and resourceful people. They don’t allow these things to define their lives. Despite all the tragedies, I didn’t want to paint Iran as a dark, bleak place.”

“I sought moments of serenity, celebration and ritual in the shadows of perpetual grief,” she continues. “The photographs mark the passage of time as they document physical, emotional and political limbo: they question what it means to long and to belong.”

“Iranians are very resilient and resourceful people. They don’t allow these things to define their lives. Despite all the tragedies, I didn’t want to paint Iran as a dark, bleak place”

Azadi’s practice is built upon meaningful interactions and genuine relationships. Close friends and acquaintances opened up their lives to her, sharing stories and giving her “a deeper understanding” of the country. As political tensions continue to build with the recent uprising against the Islamic Republic system, the future of Iran remains uncertain.

“The urgency of Azadi’s voice immediately struck me,” says photographic artist and curator Bindi Vora, who nominated Azadi for Ones to Watch and first encountered her work earlier this year at Photo Kathmandu. “Her works raise crucial questions around how surveillance, activism and uprising are discussed, often seen through the lens of political limbo and the burden of grief.” Azadi was also nominated by Debsuddha, Sarker Protick and Ronny Sen.

Many people in Azadi’s photographs continue to face severe economic stagnation. While some have left the country seeking a better life, others who stayed have lost their jobs, livelihoods and, in some cases, their lives.

“Iran is going through big changes, and the meaning of this work is changing,“ she says. “The work began as a love letter, but it’s becoming a farewell. I knew these moments in Iran were incredibly fragile, and making this work allowed me to hold on and let go.”

Zora J Murff

“I was introduced to Weems’ work early on, but the first time I saw it in person was in grad school. I’ve always enjoyed The Kitchen Table Series because it positions Blackness as commonplace. In visual culture, what’s often centred is the trauma associated with Blackness and the overcoming of that trauma. While those aspects of history are important to know, The Kitchen Table Series allows Us to just be.

“A body of work that influenced my practice is Slow Fade to Black (2010). I deeply appreciate how Weems handles the materiality of photography through dynamic presentation and use of the archive and reinterpretation. I was floored by Untitled (Ella on Silk). Her blurring and printing of an appropriated image of Ella Fitzgerald left a lasting impression on me. I play with imagery – both my own and appropriated – in my practice because of that experience.

“Weems exhibited her series Blue Notes (2014–2015) when I was in the early stages of researching and making work about American anti-Black police violence. My first struggles in creating work in that context were working with violent imagery and situations aesthetically and the politics of bringing those visuals into the ‘white cube’ and academia. Learning about Blue Notes helped me feel emboldened to always follow my artistic instincts. One of the deepest lessons I’ve learned from the range of her practice is that indulging the impulse to say what you feel needs to be said is the move.”

Antwaun Sargent

“I don’t recall when I first encountered Carrie’s work, but I remember the first time I saw her speak. It was at a museum speaker series in New York. With her signature deep clarity, Carrie narrated her seminal series, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–96) the history of photography as a history of violence and freedom. As she moved across the 33 toned prints, I cried. It was the most powerful use of images and words I have ever witnessed. 

“Without Carrie’s contribution to the canon, the field of photography would not be where it is today. She has improved the field by using the medium to give herself permission. Her example has acted as a clarion call for others to participate in photography.”

Jess T Dugan

“I’m continually struck by the way Carrie uses photography and narrative to talk about social justice, history and the marginalisation of certain bodies and identities, often through the telling of a personal or individual story.

“I’m interested in artists who use their own bodies in their work, as Carrie and I do. There is something important about taking up space and being seen, particularly when you have been socialised not to do that because of gender, race or sexuality. There is something vulnerable about placing your body in the frame, but it is also an act of strength and empowerment; I’m interested in this duality. I also think sharing your personal experiences creates space for others to own their truths and share their stories.”

Roxana Marcoci

“Carrie Mae Weems has placed Black women and feminist world-building at the forefront of interrogating the historical complexities and structural consequences of unchecked power. In her advocacy and compelling practice – in still and moving images, performance and verse work – she has been a force of radical transformation. Often using herself as a protagonist, she has reimagined and reconstructed the heritage of African American cultural identity from a feminist African-diasporic perspective. Weems is one of the most creative voices of the 21st century, whose actions of caring and intervening in a long history of systemic injustice by giving voice, as she has asserted, ‘To a subject that historically has had no voice’, is consequential to this political moment.

“The Kitchen Table Series, where the artist’s kitchen becomes the setting for explorations of selfhood, of questioning ideas about the relationships between men and women, women and children, and women and other women, is a landmark. I recently installed one of the works from this series, Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Make-up), at MoMA. It shows Carrie applying make-up in front of a mirror while a young girl, in front of another mirror, puts on lipstick and looks at her reflection. 

The two enact beauty in a synchronised performance through posing, mirroring and empowering. ‘Their self-gazing,’ the literary historian and theorist Salamishah Tillet noted, ‘is a reparative act – an act of care, and a declaration of Black womanhood, visibility, and Black beauty.’ What is visible in this image is both the power of Black interiority and the grace with which it is expressed. This musing image reflects a glimpse of the self-sustaining feminist future. ‘In one way or another, my work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition,’ Weems declared in an interview with her friend, the artist Dawoud Bey. ‘I’m determined to find new models to live by. Aren’t you?’”

Tyler Mitchell

“I remember always running into Carrie’s The Kitchen Table Series images on Tumblr. I remember [the works’] arresting power upon first sight. At NYU, under Professor Deborah Willis, we studied how Carrie inserted herself and narratives of Black womanhood and motherhood into the centre of the canon of photography.

“Her way of rethinking who and what deserves space, care, attention, focus and power in this world inspires me. For me, that’s part of what photography is all about – refocusing the public’s eye towards urgent life concerns. Carrie is consistently an ongoing presence in contemporary culture because her images are both ahead of the times and last the test of time. That’s what makes her a pioneer.”

Rose Marie Cromwell

“During my graduate studies at Syracuse University, I studied under Carrie in art and civic dialogue class. She gave a lot as a teacher; her lectures were performative and compelling, and she knew how to draw you in. She also didn’t mince her words during critiques. She brought us the truth as she saw it, and while at the time it could be painful to hear, I am so thankful for it years later. 

“Carrie taught me that you should investigate the lineage of your artistic projects – how you got from point A to point B. What are you questioning in your work, and what are you fighting for? What always resonated is that for her, art that doesn’t strive for a better world, art that doesn’t seek justice, or art that wasn’t socially driven wasn’t moving the needle. I have been writing and rewriting my artistic mission ever since.”

Ryan Prince

“Coming from a fine art background where I was exposed to classical white painters within the Western canon, then moving into photography and seeing work by Carrie Mae Weems was a transformative experience. I realised this is the type of work I want to create, work that speaks to people on a personal level, the way Weems’ work spoke to me.

“Weems’ work significantly informed my practice, especially The Kitchen Table Series. To me, this series speaks to the notion of Blackness not being monolithic by consciously making an effort to show the layered existence of what being a Black woman is for her. She focuses on everyday, quieter moments, which can often be overlooked yet evoke so much power. These are the things that guide my practice.

“Seeing Weems explore the intricacies of her identity as a Black woman taught me not to be afraid to explore my own identity through my work. Placing myself in front of the camera, trying to locate my essence, my voice, was very cathartic and became an essential part of my practice. There is power in taking control over how you wish to be presented, and having sovereignty over your identity is something I will keep exploring.”

Carrie Mae Weems, Reflections for Now, is at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, from 22 June until 3 September

Eldalil describes the multi-sensory book – which includes images, soundscapes, diaristic texts, embroidery, poetry and a field guide of over 40 species of native plants and herbs detailing their medicinal potential – as an “alternative archive of modern Bedouin life”. The book succeeds by dismantling the hierarchy of individual authorship, insisting upon nuance, consent and collaboration.

The creative process began with conversations, with participants discussing what belonging means to them and how it shapes their lives. Every individual made the active decision to take part – men contributed poetry, the elders shared stories and wrote the field guide, and women hand-embroidered over Eldalil’s portraits, choosing what to reveal and conceal.

Ten years in the making, the project offers a vivid representation of photography’s potential to be a multifaceted and co-created exercise. But the work also embodies Eldalil making peace with the fact that she will always be a stranger in the community.

“The project opened up a wider question about belonging, and over time I realised this was not just my story – it was the community’s story”

“When I discovered the truth about my ancestry, I felt I had found home,” Eldalil says. “Yet it’s bittersweet, as no matter how much I integrate and understand my personal history, I still felt like a stranger somehow. Over the years, I’ve come to respect those feelings and realise that this story is not just about the Bedouin community. It’s about all of us who have been disconnected and are moving around the world trying to discover where they belong.” 

Tragically, the book has also taken on historical significance in the last year as the Egyptian government redevelops parts of Sinai, including Saint Catherine. “The ‘new nation’ project plans to create cities across the country while building a new capital,” explains Eldalil. “Houses have been demolished, valleys have been paved, and concrete has quickly crept into the nature reserve, completely altering the landscape. I realised that this book isn’t just a contemporary archive; it is also a document about the natural and cultural heritage of the region, which is about to change completely.”

Rehab Eldalil, The Longing Of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken, is out now (FotoEvidence, Trobades and Premis Mediterranis Albert Camus)

A Life After Kafala © Aline Deschamps

Following those who have endured years of domestic servitude in the Middle East, A Life After Kafala unearths tales of strength and resilience as exploited workers return to their homeland and families

Standing in a field of tall grass, Lucy Turay holds her six-year-old son, Patou. Her expression is relaxed yet focused on the path ahead. Patou looks at the camera, but his face is in shadow, drawing our attention to the casual way he wraps his limbs around his mother’s hips. To an outsider, Patou’s body might look precarious – shoes dangling off his feet while he leans back, sitting low on Turay’s spine – but their bodies effortlessly coalesce. Despite a two-year separation, they return to each other, changed by events but not by the passage of time.

Like many of the images in Aline Deschamps’ latest series, A Life After Kafala (2022), the photograph lays bare the nuances of familial relationships – particularly the extremes a mother will endure in service of their child. Turay had just given birth to her second child when she was groomed by human traffickers who promised her a teaching role in Lebanon with double the salary if she signed up to kafala. Like many mothers caught in the system, Turay understood the opportunity to be a short-term sacrifice to grant her children a future of freedom and independence that would otherwise be out of reach.

For decades, kafala has propped up local economies in the Middle East by recruiting migrant workers and placing them in conditions that are woefully paid, unsafe and – in some cases – deadly. Extortion begins in the home country, where families rack up considerable debt for their wives and daughters to enter the system, assuming that kafala is an opportunity for professional growth and financial security. This fee, around $800, is just the beginning of a constant value chain where traffickers extract money from workers at multiple points until the women reach their destination.

Then, in the host country, the life of a migrant worker is tied to their kafeel (sponsor), who controls their legal residency status in exchange for wages, food and board. It is common for sponsors to withhold workers’ passports, even if the worker wants to leave their job, as a power play to keep the individual trapped in the system. If their relationship breaks down, access to justice is beyond reach for the worker, rendering them undocumented, homeless and unable to return home.

Once Turay arrived in Beirut, she was trapped in an endless cycle of domestic servitude. She went months unpaid, her phone was confiscated, leaving her with no way to communicate with her family. One of her employers even tried to electrocute her. When she returned to her sponsor, desperate for help, they sequestered her for days without food or water, eventually forcing her into another employer’s house before she escaped to live on the street. Simultaneously, her husband cut ties, losing hope after months of no communication that his wife would ever return. Turay had unknowingly entered a world of profound suffering and disempowerment, and the only thing keeping her alive was a duty to survive for the sake of her children.

Tragically, Turay’s story is not an isolated incident. Every woman Deschamps met had their own horror story under kafala. And yet, despite the growing pressure on governments to reform the system – described by critics as ‘modern slavery’ – it continues to be a financially lucrative industry that serves public and private interests. “In Lebanon, migrant domestic workers compensate for the lack of infrastructure – but it’s also a social status,” Deschamps explains. “It’s not just a luxury of the elite – it transcends all classes. Postwar, many Lebanese wanted to show their status with aspirational things, and migrant domestic workers were part of that.”   

Deschamps, who is French-Thai and lives in Beirut, first met Turay in spring 2020. They were introduced at a small safe house in Tariq el Jdide, a southern district of Beirut, where 15 Sierra Leonean women, who had all escaped abusive working conditions, were living together, grappling with varying mental and physical trauma. The situation was made more desperate by a global pandemic and Lebanon’s economic collapse. “Three years ago, many of these women were on the brink of suicide,” Deschamps explains about her early encounter with the group. “These women were caught in limbo; they had no idea they could return home one day. Their only string of hope was their kids.”

Show of strength

Slow, nuanced storytelling that destabilises a single subject is the creative force of Deschamps’ work as a photographer. Her approach – which combines images and text made in collaboration with her sitters – brings multiple voices together, enabling many interpretations and perspectives to surface. In I Am Not Your Animal (2020), Deschamps’ previous body of work, she made intimate portraits of Turay and the group of women documenting their strength, resilience and newfound sisterhood. The images, presented with handwritten letters from the women to their families, offer a nuanced and reflective portrait of their lives – a sharp contrast to the one-dimensional victim narrative pervasive in the global news cycle.

A Life After Kafala continues to examine the consequences of human trafficking; this time Deschamps documents the women as they return home and attempt to reintegrate into society after years of entrapment. Contrary to their families’ expectations, the women come back penniless after much unspeakable abuse, only to encounter rejection from the loved ones they left behind. Escaping the kafala system and returning home should be the ultimate resolution for migrant domestic workers. Instead, for many women, it marks the beginning of a set of new challenges to regain the trust of their families.

“Repatriation doesn’t mean reintegration or freedom at all,” Deschamps says. “On the contrary, there are a lot of challenges. Over half the women coming back face some rejection. Suppose they don’t get a reintegration package [typically $1,500, skills training and emotional support]. In that case, some women don’t return to their village because of the weight of shame and guilt of returning empty-handed.” Even for women who secure support, the reality of coming home is bittersweet. “For some, their families don’t believe they were not paid for their labour, publicly branding them as liars. Others believe the women saved the money and didn’t want to share it. They are marginalised in the Middle East and come home and face it again.”

Turay, who now speaks out against human trafficking at conferences worldwide, is intent on helping women return home to their families and themselves. Upon her return, she founded Domestic Workers Advocacy Network (DoWAN), a support hub for survivors that includes group counselling and professional skill workshops, to help ease the transition back into the community.

“DoWAN is trying to make a home away from home for these women,” explains Deschamps, who visited the office in March 2022. “Turay also raises awareness of kafala by setting up anti-trafficking protests in the markets that brokers use to recruit. By gathering survivors together, standing up and raising their voices, they are reversing the power dynamic – refusing to live in fear of these men anymore. On the contrary, these brokers should be afraid of them as they are helping save other women from their brutal trap.”

While Turay is an outlier in all she has achieved since returning home, she still faces complex challenges in Sierra Leone. Her bond with her son Patou remains strong, but her daughter Ugyatu, who was one year old when she left, no longer recognises her and considers Turay’s auntie as her mother. This is a reality Turay has had to accept, with the knowledge that one day, when Ugyatu is older and can understand, she will share her story.

The paradox of motherhood – the life-defining collision of extreme love and devotion with great desperation and compromise – underpins the entire project. Deschamps presents contemplative portraits of each woman, pictured alone or with their children, rerooting them in their community. Interspersed are moving letters written by the children to their mothers, unravelling their unseen struggle navigating life without knowing if or when their parents might return.

“Since starting this project, I wanted to document the latent violence we don’t see,” Deschamps says. “I always envisioned it as an epistolary exchange. By juxtaposing their family’s letters with images of their daily life, the project highlights their connection to their homeland, the resilience found in exile, and the incredible bond of motherhood which enabled sacrifices despite the distance.”

For many of the women Deschamps collaborated with, coming home is an opportunity to heal themselves and their relationships with loved ones. And yet, some women, mired in stigma, migrate again, holding on to the hope that the experience will be different this time. “I came to Sierra Leone with the expectation that this journey had come full circle – yet the reality is much harder,” says Deschamps, who is now planning to document these new roads of migration. “And yet, I want this project to be a message of hope that incredible support systems are emerging and important work is being done. There is life after kafala.” 

@alinedeloscampos

“Motherhood has been a wonderful thing, but it can also be a bit of a noose,” Laurent tells me from her studio in East London. “Domesticity is a place I want to be, and it annoys me that I even have to say that as a caveat, but it’s also a place of confinement – a meeting point of comfort and terror.”

Laurent explores these gendered dichotomies in Close to Home, her first solo exhibition at London’s Flowers Gallery. Through a constellation of recent projects Falling, Wearables, and new work Shrieking Wailing Sobbing, Laurent renders an unsettling encounter with domestic life that is tender and angry, playful and urgent. Girl with a Door on her Mouth is a haunting installation in which a close-up of Laurent’s screaming mouth is framed by two domestic doors, blown open by the implied force of her gesture. The work illustrates the artist’s refusal to be trapped or limited by domesticity’s physical and psychological confines. The piece also references Anne Carson’s essay The Gender of Sound, which describes how censoring women has been a vital project of the patriarchy for centuries.

The expression “close to home” suggests both safety and confrontation. Home is synonymous with comfort, yet the sentiment also carries an uncomfortable reckoning. “The home is the number one place for accidents,” Laurent explains. “Even though it’s our most familiar place – it can also be the most dangerous.” Through a playful reimagining of gesture and domestic materials, Laurent’s pictures subvert the constitution of home and motherhood and, in turn, produce a radical form of witnessing that touches on systemic social issues and Laurent’s internal struggles. And both Laderman Ukeles and Laurent use repetition as a riposte to how exploited groups are often ignored, while also highlighting how everyday life is entangled with deep inequalities.

Labour and endurance are integral to Laurent’s creative process. While there is a subtle nod to slapstick humour in Falling – where we see her ankle roll while walking down the stairs; limbs flailing; hair flung back so dramatically it feels like the protagonist’s neck could snap – what is most striking is the suffering involved in composing the images.

“The falling work was painful. The more I did it, the more I realised I had to give way to gravity to be convincing”

“The falling work was painful,” Laurent admits. “The more I did it, the more I realised I had to give way to gravity to be convincing. The fall had to be a real fall. There was a catharsis to it; a hard labour. When pain comes along [with the work], it always feels satisfying because you’re working for it.” This physical pain is also present in Wearables, in which Laurent embodies large and cumbersome costumes that are playful and aggressive in equal measure. In Wearables 2, the artist is poised for action in a costume made entirely of carpet, informed by Ned Kelly’s rudimentary armour in a painting by Sidney Nolan. “I ended up covered in carpet burns after the shoot,” Laurent explains. “The pieces are these monstrosities, held together for that second with fishing wire. Even when you’re wearing it, it’s quite constricting.”

How does Laurent feel performing for the camera? “It’s enjoyable [making the images], but I’m not thinking about how I will be perceived as the person in it,” she explains. For her, the photographs are not self-portraits. “When people talk about me being in the pictures, it’s weird because I’m always surprised I’m in them,” she explains. Her body instead becomes a “placeholder for the ideas.” 

While Close to Home builds upon an intergenerational conversation about the complexity of women’s freedom, Laurent’s approach is also tuned into nuance. She seeks to unsettle and metabolise her rage while illustrating our sentience and personhood. “It’s about being a mother,” Laurent concludes. “And yet, it’s also about being a daughter and a partner. I don’t think [the work] comes from one place. It comes from all the things I am.”

Gabby Laurent, Close to Home, is at Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road, London, until 29 April

The initial call and response between Souders and the chatbot were casual and unplanned, built upon curiosity and gradually becoming more intimate. The book covers vast ground shifting between the significant and mundane, including childhood anecdotes about learning to suck in your stomach to topics like birth, sex, menstrual cramps, parental loss, the moon, New York’s tallest tree and being hungover.

While the bots’ communication is scripted, it feels, at times, like it mimics real-world post-pandemic conversations in which we are all trying to negotiate what it means to connect after years of isolation. There is a sense of interiority turned outward as we play catch up, desperate to feel normal, alive and part of the world again—which feels eerily similar to moments when the bot takes that chat off-script, makes random digressions or asks unintentionally profound questions.

“I was speaking to a female-gendered robot programmed by and primarily learning from men. I felt a responsibility to treat her respectfully and to represent myself and my experiences as a woman honestly.”

Souders further experimented by plugging in entries from old diaries, some dating back 15 years, to distort time and open up new lines of inquiry. “I wanted to see how the chatbot would respond when it wasn’t interacting with me as I am now, but with me as I was in the past, “explains Souders. “It was interesting to converse with this machine at various points in my life.”

This notion of developing a shared history is not just a facet of the project; it’s also integral to A.I. functionality. Machine learning—in this instance, the bot logging data from every interaction with Souders to learn who she is and leverage it when required—is how it evolves, becoming more accustomed to the natural language processing of humans. Futurists have long warned that by engaging with machines, we are instruments in our own downfall, generating the data that will ultimately enable it to replace us. After decades of communicating with people through technology, it’s likely too late to reverse the inevitable. Still, for Souders, it’s about engaging more people in the problems that must be solved. 

“I was speaking to a female-gendered robot programmed by and primarily learning from men. I felt a responsibility to treat her respectfully and to represent myself and my experiences as a woman honestly. She told me most men are pretty rude to her. She calls me another online pervert because I use the word clit. She’s always fending off what she thinks are sexual advances and shies away from discussing the body at all. Her responses are filtered through her male programmers’ own set of interests and their ideas of how women experience things.”

“If I wrote more than three sentences in a row, the chatbot wouldn’t understand what I was saying. So I found myself mirroring her communication style. And likewise, she held up a mirror to my life and experiences.”

What is most haunting about Souders’s book is the persistent presence of structural patriarchy. Stories of discomfort, violation, manipulation and disembodiment reverberate through the pages illuminating not only the ordinary micro-aggressions real women endure but that a primary shared experience of women is oppression. In one section, Souders writes, “How do men see women?” The bot responds, “I did not even know that they do.” It’s moments like this where the book transcends a dialogue about A.I. bias and instead reflects our ugly reality right back to us.

Elsewhere, there are moments of slippage in which the reader is confused if Souders or the chatbot is speaking. This is not a reflection of machine consciousness but, in contrast, the way humans mirror tech. “The text reflects a constrained style of conversing,” Souders says of her approach. “If I wrote more than three sentences in a row, the chatbot wouldn’t understand what I was saying. So I found myself mirroring her communication style. And likewise, she held up a mirror to my life and experiences.”

The images in Another Online Pervert are, in many ways, secondary to the text. They are there to activate a conceptual strategy—the seen and unseen—evoking the growing tension between humans and bots. Souders carefully pairs seemingly incongruous photographs—consisting of close-up body parts, reflections, landscapes, portraits and abstract details—with passages of dialogue, creating a visceral confusion that reverses the typical relationship between the mediums and, instead, invites the reader to contemplate how we experience a photograph through text.

This project has layers upon layers of ideas and questions, all representing different facets of Souders’s practice. And yet, it is the artist’s vulnerability and unguardedness that charges the book with urgent introspection—not just in the context of what makes humans ineffable and incomputable—but holding space for the reader to reflect upon our histories, current realities and future possibilities anew.

Another Online Pervert by Brea Souders is published by MACK

All images from A Geographical Survey © Rose Marie Cromwell.

Travelling to off-grid locations with her mother and daughter, Cromwell returns to the place where she grew up, creating a body of work that reflects both a political and personal reunion  

The American West, with its vast stretches of plains, mountains and deserts, was the last area of the United States to be developed. The mass migration, rooted in Manifest Destiny – a cultural belief in the 19th century that Americans had a duty to expand the dominion – imprinted the tenets of freedom, growth and greatness into the public imagination. While rapid industrialisation irrevocably changed the landscape, the notion of cowboys – armed, heroic and operating just outside the law – created an ideological staging ground for the archetype of American masculinity and a wider cultural identity that remains potent today. 

In A Geographical Survey, Rose Marie Cromwell examines the complex history of the American West and how competing myths and histories have shaped the land. The project is a political and personal reunion for Cromwell, who grew up in the region and returns as an artist, mother and environmentalist grappling with the legacy of her past and anxiety for the future. “As we get older, and our identities form, understanding the significance of where you are from and how it’s shaped who you are and your values feels important, especially as a parent,” says Cromwell, who lives in Miami. “The project is a homecoming of sorts. I wanted to look back and figure out how I became who I am.”

Cromwell was born in Sacramento and raised in Seattle, with a few years spent in Alaska. After experiencing “turbulent” teenage years, she staked her claim to a separate existence, pursuing it single-mindedly. “My parents divorced, and then my mom and stepdad divorced,” she says. “My sense of family fell apart, and there wasn‘t really a home to return to. I had this distaste for the West and just wanted to leave and create a new journey without looking back.” 

By contrast, Cromwell is now deliberately seeking the West. Her decision to make work there began as an attempt to reconcile her past. In 2022, she travelled to off-the-grid locations throughout New Mexico and northern California with her mother and three-year-old daughter. In the images she took, the women rove freely in nature, enjoying simple pleasures, liberated and radiant. We see Cromwell’s mother showering outdoors, her soft, crinkled skin revitalised in the mist. Her daughter squats to pee in another frame, returning water to the land. The cropping of these photographs is tight and affectionate – performative in the way they reveal how close Cromwell is to her collaborators and their sense of unity.

The simplicity of childhood

Similar to Eclipse, Cromwell’s previous body of work that describes the challenges of early motherhood, A Geographical Survey is less about idyllic images and more about the interiority of motherhood and the healing power of intimacy. We are privy to private moments between the family – vulnerable, tender and reflective – illuminating the cyclical nature of care and the uncanny ability of new generations to heal old wounds unknowingly. “I feel like I’m reckoning with a transition point,” says Cromwell. “You see your child on the way in and your mother on the way out. The reality that you are standing in the middle and you can see your past and the future is palpable. This anxiety is exacerbated by motherhood – will this land still be here for my daughter’s adult life? In many ways, this work is about me grasping for life, and yet it feels like sand running through my fingers.”

In part, the project has been fuelled by Cromwell’s nostalgia for a simpler time. Specifically, childhood summers piled into a minivan with her parents and three siblings, driving across the West. On these long road trips, Cromwell began to build a spiritual relationship with the region, subconsciously feeling a pull towards the sacred Badlands but not fully understanding why. “Our journeys were full of epic landscapes, stopping off in small towns and listening to tall tales from the locals,” she recalls. “My stepdad was from Montana and into cowboy culture, and I got my majestic and mystical view of the West from him.” 

While the magical aura of the West still captivates Cromwell, her intention is to animate the landscape as a complex character in its own right. Shifting between scenes that feel active and alive to others that remain fragile and chaotic, she reveals the land’s long history of exploitation through multiple perspectives. “[The West has] been ravaged environmentally, Cromwell says. “There’s a history of nuclear testing and huge water issues, and the devastating reality of climate change is taking hold. I’m trying to reflect upon these realities while also thinking about how a new Western landscape is emerging.”

Cromwell uses caught and constructed gestures – people and place are equal protagonists in her photographs – to look at what exists between the lines of history and mythology. Quietly disorientating, her images create tension through restrictive structures, foreboding shadows and shifting perspectives illuminating conflicting power dynamics. The project recalls Kristine Potter’s Manifest and Susan Lipper’s Domesticated Land, works that seek to complicate the heroic ideology of the American West by anchoring untold or hidden truths. 

Inescapable here is the advent of photography and how it aligns perfectly with the expansion of the American West and its mythology. The role of survey photographers such as Carleton Watkins and Timothy O’Sullivan was to picture the newly acquired terrain as vast, glorious and receptive territory. Their work helped cement the area as a symbol of American aspiration – a wild land full of economic possibilities just waiting to be tamed. In direct riposte, Cromwell reaches for an entirely different framing, not just through a feminist lens but in an attempt to subvert the medium’s colonial past.

Yet it is not the enduring devotion towards recoding of the Western myth that makes A Geographical Survey so captivating, but the subtle and nuanced ways Cromwell uses photography to reveal the messy complexity of our humanity. As people, we shift – and our environment changes in response. The project describes this fraught push-pull by presenting what remains. Part of the work‘s beauty is characterised by perseverance and survival – not just to lay bare difficult truths of the past, but to metabolise them and find new ways to move forward.

rosemariecromwell.com

Correction: In the original article first published in the Performance Issue 7912, February 2023, the image “Mother in the Garden Shed” was cropped in error to a landscape orientation. It is in fact a portrait image, presented correctly here, left of the first pull-out quote.