THE VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

MOVING VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY OF QUEER

 ABSTRACT
The presentation focuses on the invisible vintage Photography
of the Queer . As a means of visual communication and
expression, photography has distinct aesthetic
capabilities. Photography is the reality; the real object is often
experienced as a letdown. Straight versus queer photography
as two interacting schools of camera work. Queer
photography shows that there are many ways to work with,
around or against the reality-effect of photography, and
anything other than the latter is by no means necessarily naive
or conservative.

Aims and Objectives

The presentation focuses on the invisible vintage
Photography of the Queer.
It also tries to bring into limelight the distinction between
Straight and queer photography.
It further questions how has photography over the years
functioned as a tool to form a collective queer
consciousness.
How camera play as an instrument of representation.

Methodology :
The Data for the present work have been collected from Secondary
sources.
Introduction
What is a photography?

Photography is defined as the heterosexual eye. Lifestyles and

sexualities that differ from this position are perceived as weird,
grotesque, ridiculous. Straight photography- queer contortions.

There is no such unitary thing as photography.

Photography is a convenient way of referencing the

diversity of practices, institutions and historical

conjectures in which the photographic text is
produced,circulated and deployed.

Stuart Hall

Straight VS Queer

"Straight" and "queer" are key terms in American photographic

discourse: "straight" served

as the central concept of camera work between the 1920s and the
1960s, whereas "queer" photography questioned and challenged
straight standards in the late twentieth century.
What is a Queer Photography?

"Queer Photography" as a concept runs against all definitions, all fixed meaning, forever
questioning, redeploying, twisting terms, texts and itself from conventional usage. Any form
of excess can usually be traced to the seed of a basic human longing. Before photography
turned into excessive aesthetic consumerism long prior to the narcissistic golden age of
the selfie , it was a miraculous medium that granted one simple, fundamental human wish
the desire to be seen and, in the act of seeing, to be understood. Perhaps that is why
photography, in its dawning decades, had a particularly poignant role for individuals and
groups who were largely invisible to society. It was the role photography played for the
LGBTQ community between the time of the mediums invention and the first-ever Pride
parades as it came to document, and validate by making visible, the love of queer couples.
 Distinction between Straight and Queer
Photography
Straight photography operated with fixed
concepts of truth, accuracy, and artistic
excellence. In the early twentieth century,
critics and artists attempted to purify, to
embellish, masculinize photography. The most
prominent term produced by the discourse
un- folding around the photographic image
was "straight photography. The subjects of
photographers might have struggled "to
maintain a pose," moving their bodies in
"queer contortions. The individual behind the
camera was assumed to act straight,
unemotional, fully in control.
" A. D. Coleman has pointed out how
"straight" stood for much more than for
technical detail. "Straight" was about
"sharpness of focus and realism," qualities
that became not simply matters of style but
moral imperatives. Straightness, like
masculinity according to
Norman Mailer, is not something given, but
something one has to fight for to make
his own. Even in the television era, when
photo journalism was gradually losing
Queer photography has become an accepted school,
comparable to straight photography in the first half
of the twentieth century, even if the term "queer
photography" is not used as frequently.
If "queer" came to gate-crash the art world's party,
pull the carpet from under the feet of artists,
critics, and historians alike, with hopes of shattering
concepts of sex, gender, art, and representation, its
own success may have weakened its thrust. It
seems as if "queer" had joined the crowd, as if its
destabilization of identity had become a staple of
contemporary culture. "Gender surfing" has become
an entry in the art world's glossary, on one level
with "globalization," and "virtual reality."Measured
against queer theory's challenge to academia
(where the intention was to "mess up the
desexualized spaces," to "reimagine the publics), it
is easy to see that queer art's impact has certainly
not shaken the foundations of the art world. That,
however, only invalidates some of the high-strung
rhetoric surrounding queer, not the artists' works .
Nor thus this make it less relevant to challenge
Straight photography and its camera of common
sense.

its position as the most accurate and

fascinating medium, photography was still
surrounded by a rhetoric of accuracy,
authenticity, universality. "Straight" as a
concept still echoes: the sober, simple,
unretouched image seems to have retained its
power.
How has photography over the years
functioned as a tool to form a collective
queer consciousness?
Visibility and a shifting cultural consciousness surrounding any civil rights movement go
hand in hand, and the journey for mainstream acceptance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community is no different. A key part of large-scale social
acceptance of queer people over the years has always been photographic.

Photographs have stood (and continue to stand) as documents of their lives and activities.
From Weegee and Bill Eppridge, whose photographs relegated queers to a dark and seedy
underworld, to the works of the photographers of the Black Star press agency and the Body
Politic in the 1970s and 1980s that put (LGBTQ) rage and their love on view -- as a challenge
to the status quo, without shame we see how things have changed. They have also stood
(and continue to stand) as potent tools of activism. There are lots of Queer exhibition that
explores queer identity and the play of gender. Artists have used photographs and videos to
question gender norms and express an expanded range of individual identities , it was
important to bring this diverse range of works together to showcase how photographic
images have played a key role in making queer communities more visible and have served as
tools for bringing a sense of collective characteristics, experiences, and ambitions for queer
communities to light.

Camera as an instrument of representation

Photography frames the body, identifies it , and control it a male teenagers can also be
read as a symbolic return of the male gaze. The concept of gaze is one that deals with how
an audience views the people presented . As an approach to photographic looking relations,
the gaze yields valuable insights , but it can also be hermetic and totalizing when it fixes
meaning and denies the possibility that something resides beyond it . As in Wharton's
novel, her straight observations represent some of their subjects' poses as "queer
contortions." Here, too, the camera is an instrument in the struggles around
power/knowledge, identity, and desire. In spite of all the power games that remain to be
played, it is necessary to remember that photography still gives us the "delight of illusion.
The cold, straight gaze and its queer deconstruction are one thing: it is another thing to be
charmed by the graceful gesture of a teenager. Especially in the field of photography, the
narrow focus on such issues as surveillance and power could have made critics blind to the
images infinite possibilities, histories, and ambiguities.
Conclusion

Not only in photography about in every sphere we can see how the hegemonic power plays
an important role. AS the Queer communities are subcultural , in the sense that they are not
majoritarian , dominant or mainstream. While this doesnt necessarily make them
oppositional, it atleast makes them alternative. If subculture is often thought of as a social
world, a shared perspective, which is not attached firmly to any definite group or segment,
it is also more easily dislodged from fixed notions of identity, it calls forth ideas of
Subcultural practices and puts less emphasis on belonging.