Photographs: Germaine de Larch
Model: Kageykeys Lee Mothala
RESHOOTING THE CITY: A CALL FOR COLLABORATIONS BEYOND BINARIES
My story and the story of my community is not a story that I recognise in the stories told by the majority of narratives in the media, in commercial art, in the voices of those in power.
In fact, my story and the stories of others like me – the Other – is only told when newspapers tell of corrective rape, corrective rape-related mutilations and deaths and other tales of horror and disenfranchisement; or in the spectacle opposite to this – the drag queen, the prancing Pride queen, the bulldyke and the lipstick lesbian. In these stories, queers are represented, documented, politicised, reduced to a stereotype, made a spectacle from the outside in, from the point of view of dominant discourse.
The vision behind my work, with the emphasis on the human, the private, the ordinary, is to present the extraordinary within the ordinary lives of ordinary people from inside that world itself. I do not make a spectacle of myself or my ‘subjects.’ I do not document them. I collaborate with them. I meet them in their private spaces and tell their private stories.
I want to go beyond the spectacle of the Other. I want to tell the stories of the private lives of people like me. I want to make a public statement that our private lives are beautiful, playful and extraordinary and that we do not deserve to be relegated to the spectacle of politics.
CALL FOR COLLABORATORS
If you're interested in participating in portraits that tell your queer story and the story of your community - stories outside of the binaries of male:female, heterosexual:homosexual - send me an email(germainedelarch@gmail.com) or inbox me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GermaineDeLarch I'm Joburg-based, but will be in Cape Town from the 20th of December through to the 6th of January.
