The Wild Beasts

Through The Wild Beasts I honor my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors. I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories, I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural and human worlds. Each portrait is accompanied by a landscape view to challenge the ways that photographic histories have established visual categorizations of right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, wild and tamed. These environments speak to the character of each friend and to the use of Nature against queer people in most legal systems globally. Our basic human rights are consistently challenged in courts under the premise that we are “unnatural.” Through these images I rework photographic lineages and tools into spaces of power and love.