In a city that consumes and forgets, these portraits demand you to look- really look- at the queer bodies that built your culture. The ones who dreamed it brighter, risked everything for expression, and laid the blueprint for the zeitgeist you wear now like an ill-fitting costume.

Shot on medium format film- intimate, unflinching, impossibly sharp- this work holds a mirror to the body as protest, as pleasure, as spectacle. Queerness is here in its full contradiction: sacred and profane, playful and political, tender and furious.

Our bodies have always been currency- offered up, fetishized, policed, celebrated. We are trendsetters and taboos, saints and sinners, architects and art. This is not about respectability. This is about taking up space. About laughing while we do it. About being seen in the crisp, unapologetic focus history denied us.

Because your world was built on the backs of queer bodies. And we’re still here- posing.

-Ryan