I Am A Camera

LGBTQ communities seen from within

Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst (USA)
Sunil Gupta (UK/India)
Lindsay Morris (USA)
Frédéric Nauczyciel (France)
Irina Popova (Russia)
Anna Charlotte Schmid (Germany)
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (USA)
Charan Singh (India/UK)

Installation view of Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst's photographs in the exhibition I AM A CAMERA at FotoFest. Photo courtesy of Nash Baker.

“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking… Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.” - Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

Taking its cue from Christopher Isherwood’s introduction to Goodbye to Berlin, an observation of the narrator’s milieu and the effects wrought upon it by acute political and social upheaval, I Am A Camera is about representation, sexual orientation, gender identity expression, society, and community. The members of the communities pictured self-identify across a broad spectrum of sexuality, gender roles, race, class, culture, and politics. A diverse, multifaceted population, they resist generalization and traditional, normative expectations. As such, LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer) communities have defined - and continually redefine - themselves on their own terms.

We remember the 1990s as the age of identity politics, promulgating myriad projects looking at race and gender – and sometimes dealing with sexual orientation. This begs the question “why make this LGBTQ exhibition now?” Despite a rich history of presenting LGBTQ artists and a deep engagement with social issues and progress, this exhibition is a first for FotoFest. In development for the last 18 months, the project focuses on a spectrum of identities and expression through the lens of community. In retrospect, the theme is timely and cogent once again. Through the globalization of contemporary communications and the introduction of technologies such as social media, we are more aware of and informed about the situations of LGBTQ communities worldwide – giving us the opportunity and impetus to explore these queer topics at FotoFest, investigating widely and rigorously while continuing to defy expectations.

I Am A Camera is an exhibition that performs as a conduit for sexual orientation and gender identity expression within the context of community. The nine artists – hailing from the United States, United Kingdom, India, France, Germany, and Russia - explore a number of humanist themes, including relationships, self-realization and determination, isolation, class struggle, community, and the creation of safe space(s). Their works encompass traditional black & white photography, contemporary staged photography, film, video, and installation work. They represent a wide spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identity expression.

In late June 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its historic decision to grant legal status to same-sex marriage across all 50 states of the union. This decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, comes less than thirty years after Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court decision that in 1986 affirmed the right of individual states to criminalize gay sex. This is a remarkable, almost radical, evolution in such a short period of time. We have witnessed a similar evolution in the way we, as a culture, view and treat the expression of gender identity.

Although the works presented in I Am A Camera span a four-decade time period, beginning with Greenwich Village during the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, the exhibition avoids historical survey. Its predominant focus is on work produced within the last five years, exhibiting a broad range of global artistic research that explores strategies of survival, the articulation of difference, and the wealth to be found in community.

The shutter is open. The artists are recording.

Steven Evans
FotoFest Executive Director and Exhibition Curator

About the artists
Zackary Drucker and Rhy Ernst (USA)
Artists/Filmmakers Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst are extreme collaborators whose works address layers of representational identity transcendence, futuregender, and living life in a human body. Relationship (2008-2014), an autobiographical photo chronicle of Drucker and Ernst’s romantic partnership, premiered at the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Their fantastical hero’s journey She Gone Rogue (2012) was shown at the 2012 Made in LA Biennial at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York; Fan the Flames, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and at Outfest, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Experimental Film. Collectively and separately, they have shown work at venues such as Sundance, MOMA PS1, Oberhausen, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Deitch Projects, Leo Koenig Projekte, Chicago International Film Festival, REDCAT, LACE, Invisible Exports in New York, Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles, the Moscow International Biennale For Young Art, and at Les Recontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid. Currently, they are both Associate Producers of the Amazon television series Transparent. Drucker and Ernst live and work in Los Angeles.

Sunil Gupta (UK/India)
Born in 1953, Sunil Gupta is an artist, writer, activist and curator. His work has been shown internationally in over 90 solo exhibitions, most recently at Yale University, New Haven, CT (2015). Recent significant group exhibitions include Paris – Delhi – Bombay... at the Pompidou Centre (2011) and Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain at the Tate Liverpool (2013). Gupta’s curatorial efforts were paramount in the monumental exhibition, Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at The Whitechapel Gallery, London and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2010).

Gupta’s published work includes the monographs Queer: Sunil Gupta (Prestel/Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011); Wish You Were Here: Memories of a Gay Life (Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2008); and Pictures From Here (Chris Boot Ltd., New York, 2003).

Sunil Gupta is currently Visiting Professor at UCA, Farnham, UK. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including; George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate Britain and Harvard University. Gupta is represented by sepia EYE, New York.

Lindsay Morris (USA)
Born and raised in suburban Detroit, Lindsay Morris resides on the East End of Long Island with her husband and two children. Her passion for photography began at age 18, when she was given her first camera while spending a year in South Africa as a Rotary Youth Exchange student. Lindsay Morris began her formal studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BFA from the University of Michigan School of Art.

Morris’ work has been published in TIME Magazine; the New York Times Magazine; (cover story), GEO Germany and GEO International; Days Japan; Loupe; PDN; Marie Claire; Elle; Internazionale; Haaretz Israel; and Sunday Life Australia. Her work has also been featured on photography blogs including VICE; TIME LightBox; WPO; Fraction; Slate/Behold; and abcNews.com.

A participant in FotoFest’s 2014 Meeting Place Portfolio Review, Morris was a 2013 Critical Mass finalist and a nominee for the 2013 Julia Margaret Cameron Award. Recent solo exhibitions include Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago (2013); the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, CO (2014); RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco (2015); and Clamp Art, New York (2015). Lindsay has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Outono Fotografico Festival, Spain; Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NY; and the Fence at Photoville, Brooklyn, NY and Atlanta, GA. Her 2015 book You Are You is published by Kehrer Verlag, Berlin.

Frédéric Nauczyciel (France)
Born 1968 in Paris, Frédéric Nauczyciel lives and works between Paris and the US. Inspired by American postmodern dance and cinema, he works primarily in photography, video, and performance. Through his images, he explores the complexity of social life, be it rural or urban. He employs a nuanced type of portraiture that treats his protagonists in the context of the fabric of their surroundings.

His most recent productions explore the vivid underground culture of voguing within the transgender black communities in Baltimore, MD, and Paris. Nauczyciel was taken by the poetics of survival that he experienced with his protagonists, who invent themselves through performance. Nauczyciel’s work reflects dynamic tensions of sexuality, power, and hybridization.

He has exhibited or performed internationally, including at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne; Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie of d’Arles; Musée de la Chasse, Paris; Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona; Julie Meneret Gallery, NYC; and Honfleur Gallery, Washington D.C. Nauczyciel’s work has been covered by a wide range of international publications, including the New York Times, Le Monde, and Marie Claire.

Irina Popova (Russia)
Born in 1986 in Tver, Russia, Irina Popova is a documentary photographer and curator. A graduate of the Tver State University School of Journalism, Popova studied photography at FotoDepartament, St. Petersburg, in 2007. In 2008-2010, she studied documentary photography and mixed media at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia.

Popova worked as a staff writer and photographer for Ogoniok Magazine in Moscow from 2008-2009. In 2010, she moved to the Netherlands, and was artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam from 2011-2012. In 2013, Popova co-founded the Dostoevsky Photography Society collective. In 2013-2014, she curated an exhibition FFABRU/Foreign Fotographers About Russia, as part of the Open Border Festival, Amsterdam; subsequently, the exhibition toured to ten Russian cities.

Irina Popova has participated in numerous exhibitions and photography festivals in Russia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Burma, and Lisbon, including the Photoquai Biennale, Paris and the Noorderlicht and Breda Photo international festivals in the Netherlands. Her work has been published by Lenta.ru; Afisha Mir; Russian Reporter; Ogoniok; the Guardian; Geo International; the New York Times; Gup Magazine; and Lens Culture. Popova’s work is included in the collections of the Russian State Museum; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; and the Rijksakademie Amsterdam.

In 2014, Popova published the photo books Another Family and If You Have a Secret. She has received numerous awards and nominations, including Delphic Games of Russia (2006, 2007, 2008); Young Photographers of Russia (2008 and 2010); Best Photographer of Russia (2009); the UNICEF prize honorable mention (2009); Award of Fund of Development of Photojournalism, Russia (2009); and nomination for the Marie Claire Photo Award (2012). She teaches photography in Moscow at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia.

Anna Charlotte Schmid (Germany)
Born in Essen in 1984, Anna Charlotte Schmid studied photography at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen and at MOME/Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary. Her work has been shown at Villa Ichon, Bremen (2013); Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Wiesbaden (2013); Telep, Budapest (2013); De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2013); nGbK, Berlin (2014); and Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin as part of the 6th European Month of Photography (2014). Schmid has been awarded a number of prizes for her work, including first prize in the category ‘Gender’ at Pride Photo Award, Amsterdam (2013). Her photographs have been published in several magazines including PHOTOGRAPHIE, Dfa Magazine and Camera Austria International. Schmid lives and works in Berlin.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (USA)
Paul Mpagi Sepuya was born in San Bernardino, CA in 1982. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, having recently relocated from Brooklyn, NY, where he was based from 2000 – 2014.

Sepuya has been an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency (2009-2010); the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2010); the Studio Museum in Harlem (2010-2011); Fire Island Artist Residency (2013); and most recently at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago (2014). His most recent artist publication, STUDIO WORK, was self-published in 2012 and the related body of work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City; the Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY; Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis; and Artspeak, Vancouver. Sepuya’s work is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. His print zine series SHOOT (2005 – 2008) is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum Library; the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York; and the Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Charan Singh (India/UK)
Born in 1978, Charan Singh lives and works in New Delhi and London. He is currently a PhD candidate in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. Singh’s photographic practice is informed by his 13 years of HIV/AIDS work and community activism in India, along with a formal study of the history of art and photography. He is interested in the representation of desires, identities, gender, sexuality, relationships, loss, trauma and recovery. Simultaneously, he questions notions of the genre of self-portraiture, however, the principal common thread of his works are memory, storytelling, and masculinity His work has been exhibited recently at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2014) and The Photographers Gallery, London (2015). Singh is represented by sepia EYE, New York.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS
Lee Anthony and J. Travis Capps Jr.; Bill Arning and Mark McCray; Michael A. Chesser; Susan Oliver Heard; David J. Klonkowski; Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg, South Africa; Eliane Thweatt; George J. Toland III; and anonymous donors

FOTOFEST 2014-2015 ART PROGRAM SEASON SPONSORS
Houston Endowment Inc; City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; National Endowment for the Arts; Texas Commission on the Arts; The Wortham Foundation; FotoFest Board of Directors; Judith and Gamble Baldwin; Robert Gerry III; William and Rosalie Hitchcock; HexaGroup; Houston Public Media; European Photography Magazine; iLand Internet Solutions; and Silver Street Studios

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