Photobooks are visual stories we can hold in our hands, inviting a closer look as images unfold page by page. They create an intimate encounter between the viewer and the book. At the heart of the Photography Centre, the Kusuma Gallery celebrates the photobook as an artistic medium, housing a browsing library that encourages visitors to pause, pick up a book, and engage with photography in a tactile and immersive way.
Currently on display is a selection of queer photobooks celebrating the release of Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography, published by the V&A and Thames & Hudson. This book examines the V&A’s extensive photography collection and explores how LGBTQIA+ artists have shaped the medium since its early days in the 1830s. The 15 photobooks available for browsing build on this history – reimagining representation, challenging norms, and exploring the spaces and objects that have surrounded queer artists and their lived experiences.
In Prospect Cottage, photographed and written by Gilbert McCarragher, a neighbour and friend of Derek Jarman, we step inside the home of the artist, filmmaker, and activist. Jarman’s and Keith Collins’ house became a living artwork, illustrating that queer art isn’t always about representation – it also encompasses the spaces and objects that convey queer histories and the love they leave behind. Another kind of home comes to life in Casa Susanna, a photobook that reveals a network of transgender women and cross-dressers who, in the 1950s and ’60s, found refuge in a country house in rural New York. Their portraits form a record of a chosen family – demonstrating that even in times of repression, queer people have always found ways to be together.
The human body becomes a living sculpture through Martin de Crignis’ photographs. In the beauty & the boys, he reimagines the classic male nude by portraying his models in domestic settings, such as kitchens or workshops, turning everyday objects into plinths and transforming the familiar into something canonical. Similarly, Queer Tattoo celebrates tattooing as an artistic expression, showing how LGBTQIA+ individuals reclaim their bodies through their own iconographies.
Tim Walker’s Shoot for the Moon transforms fashion photography into a dreamlike queer adventure, featuring icons such as Tilda Swinton, RuPaul, and Björk in theatrical, otherworldly portraits. Ardelle Schneider’s Butterflies and Caterpillars offers an intimate look at the contemporary drag scene in Miami, USA, following her subjects through both public performances and private moments.
Mahalia Taje Giotto and Whitney Hubbs turn the camera onto themselves, using self-portraiture to challenge gender norms. In existential boner, Giotto documents their transition through layered images and handwritten scribbles, capturing the raw and messy process of becoming oneself. Meanwhile, in Say So, Hubbs disrupts traditional notions of femininity with exaggerated, strange and, at times, uncomfortable self-portraits that question how society defines what is beautiful or desirable.
Vince Aletti’s The Drawer transforms a lifetime of collecting into an award-winning photobook. Aletti found a way to re-signify the paper ephemera from his personal archive, creating astonishing collages that blend clippings of art, music, fashion, sports, and gay culture. In contrast, Duane Michals: Portraits feels like an intimate conversation that reveals something deeper about his iconic sitters.
This display doesn’t shy away from big topics, either. Yuki Kihara’s Paradise Camp rethinks past and present by reclaiming Pacific Island histories through staged photographs that challenge colonial narratives. Kihara rewrites history from a queer Indigenous perspective. Sitara Thalia Ambrosio’s Fragile as Glass documents LGBTQIA+ lives in Ukraine during the ongoing war, showing how queer people are surviving and finding connections even in the hardest of times.
Historical works like Claude Cahun (Photofile) feel fresh and relevant today. Cahun’s surrealist self-portraits blur the lines between identity and imagination, proving that queer expression has always been at the cutting edge of art, culture and politics. Finally, Deeply Human: Global Queer Photography expands the conversation beyond borders, featuring artists from Queer Festival Heidelberg’s photography competition. These images point out that queer experiences are as universal as they are individual.
All these photobooks remind us that LGBTQIA+ people are everywhere and that queer ingenuity is woven into every corner of art and culture. We invite you to visit the Photography Centre browsing library and discover the stories these photobooks have to tell you.
This display was made possible by the generosity of SPBH/MACK, Thames & Hudson, and Verlag Kettler.
Queer Photobooks is on display in the Kusuma Gallery until May 2025.
Full Queer Photobooks list:
From Self Publish, Be Happy / MACK
existential boner by Mahalia Taje Giotto
Say So by Whitney Hubbs
The Drawer by Vince Aletti
From Verlag Kettler
Butterflies and Caterpillars by Ardelle Schneider
Deeply Human – Global Queer Photography
Fragile as Glass by Sitara Thalia Ambrosi
Queer Tattoo
the beauty & the boys by Martin de Crignis
From Thames & Hudson
Calling the Shots
Casa Susanna
Claude Cahun (Photofile)
Duane Michals: Portraits
Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara
Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman’s House by Gilbert McCarragher
Tim Walker: Shoot for the Moon
