Words by Jonny Woo
As queer people, whether we identify as an LGBT or any other of the letters that make up our collective acronym, we often see ourselves as outsiders.
Generations having lived through harsh legal discriminations; our own society’s attitude often slow to catch up with political advances; HIV stigmatized and those living with it feeling marginalized; transgender communities, whilst enjoying a moment in the spotlight, often living with unwelcome hostilities on a day to day basis. Western media paints a picture of life adhering to the heterosexual model (or aspiring to it) and we, despite our attempts to the contrary, can feel other. Sometimes we can celebrate our otherness, but often it can be a source of pain.
There is much to identify with in The Barbican’s current major photographic exhibition, Another Kind Of Life; Photography On The Margins.
The exhibition, wonderfully curated by Alona Pardo, displays work by artists who are fascinated by those existing on the fringes of society. Either through social circumstance – homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, lifestyle which is at odds cruel regimes – or through choice, as part of life’s youthful rebellion, within the underworld of gangs and organized crime.
The work of Paz Errázuritz is immediately attractive to me, as an artist who enjoys playing with gender in my work. But the subjects of her pictures in Chile under the political terror of Pinochet have endured horrors I’m fortunate never to know. Whilst I can on one level enjoy the playfulness of a subject flirting with their reflection at a dressing table, one cannot deny the sense of pain and stoicism as they stare through her lens. Cross-dressing, provoking, defying and surviving. When the subjects relax and smile freely, the effect is heartbreaking.
The images from Casa Susanna, a transvestite resort in The States in the 1960s, are softer, yet reveal complicated subtexts. The series of photographs found at a flea market in NYC decades later are a rare glimpse at a private world, which was very much at odds with the conservative mainstream. Men, cross-dressing or maybe transgender, posing alone or in small groups. The power of the lens focused on them allowing them to become the women they desire to be, through the angle of a hand or the tilt of a head.
Teresa Margolles’s subjects of transgender sex workers posing on the dance floors of demolished discotheques in Mexico are striking for their vibrant use of colour, but also for the isolation of the subject within the rubble, under expansive blue skies. They are resilient survivors, yet vulnerable, exposed, in constant danger of being beaten or killed.
One of my favourite sections of the exhibition is the work of Alec Soth, who chose to live in the North American wilderness in the mid 00s. His subjects are hermits who live in the forests and woodlands, and amongst large photographs of spectacular scenery we find lone brooding subjects. On closer inspection, one of the subjects has a swastika on his arm. These men have escaped a society where their extreme views are unwelcome, or perhaps where they are outcast as violent criminals. The bucolic landscapes are seductive, but the subtext is terrifying. The effect – arresting.
One of the most memorable images from the exhibition is by Mary Ellen Mark, who documented homeless kids on the streets of Seattle, Washington. Two children hold on to each other, one protecting the other. The older, perhaps, looking directly into the camera, on a wet empty back street, the corners of their mouth raised slightly, the beginnings of, or perhaps the remains of a smile.
Another Kind Of Life is a massive exhibition well worthy of a couple of hours of your day. On a purely aesthetic level, there is much to enjoy and all the series are rich with narrative and subtext.
It is a reminder that sometimes we may not be as far outside the mainstream as we think, but also that no matter how far on the edges of society people are, there remains the need to survive and have the freedom to keep hold of the sense of oneself.
‘Another Kind Of Life: Photography On The Margins’ runs until Sunday 27th May
Jonny is presenting a new performance work, Dream Of Consciousness, at The Barbican Friday 25th May 10.30pm tickets for both from barbican.org.uk
