Queering Family Photography

Heather Thornton

Co-curated by Professor Elspeth Brown and Thy Phu, Queering Family Photography, is an upcoming exhibition opening as part of the Contact Photography Festival. Presented by The Family Camera Network and the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, this exhibit will be hosted at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto from April 21 - May 26, 2018.

About the exhibition (from The Family Camera Network website):

How do photographs reflect, create, and anchor the affective life of queer families? From families of choice to families of origin, “Queering Family Photography” explores the critical work that queer, trans, and Two-Spirited family photos do in documenting and creating queer modes of intimacy and belonging. While family photography is usually seen as a problematic site of normativity by queer and trans people, this exhibition explores how the affective attachments of queer family photographs have also sustained us. The show traces how queer, trans and Two-Spirited people draw on photography to stretch the frame of family to include queer kinships outside the heteronormative, nuclear family model. These photographs reveal queer modes of intimacy and belonging from the queer domesticities of life “at home” to the role of public space in anchoring queer kinship. The images capture fleeting moments of love and desire, as well as the connections between generations, which are often fractured and even broken by a normalizing state and culture.

Professor Elspeth Brown spoke during a segment on CBC's Metro Morning about the exhibition. Listen here.

Upcoming on April 26th, join renowned artist Sunil Gupta (UK), acclaimed filmmaker Richard Fung (Canada) and prominent Two-Spirited activist Albert McLeod in conversation with co-curators Elspeth Brown and Thy Phu for a conversation on the occasion of Queering Family Photography and Friends and Lovers (another exhibit showing at the Stephen Bulger Gallery during the festival). Queering Family Photography: Roundtable, University of Toronto, Hart House East Common Room, Thursday, April 26th, 5-7pm.