In a year of erasure, queer art reminds us we exist
As LGBTQ rights continue to be under assault by the Trump administration, I have found myself in need of queer spaces and culture more than ever.
Our identities and history are being erased in federal databases and major institutions, making it necessary to acknowledge not only what we have lived through as a community, but also how we continue to thrive as culture makers. Our stories are all the more sacred when those in power suppress them.
A day after the news broke of plans to remove the name of assassinated San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk from a naval vessel, I went to the opening of 'Positives & Negatives: Memories From Castro Camera in the Time of Harvey Milk' at Queer Arts Featured. The three-year-old LGBTQ+ gallery and boutique is located in Milk's old Castro Camera storefront, and this is the first time they have built a show around that history.
Founder Devlin Shand was very intentional about holding out for the right Milk project, and 'Positives & Negatives' was worth the wait. The timing of opening a show dedicated to photos processed at Castro Camera during Milk's life, just as he enters the news again, is unbelievably spooky. But it was a balm to be surrounded by people who knew Milk and who were part of the exhibition.
'Positives & Negatives' unleashes a trove of photographs (most never shown) that document different slices of the LGBTQ experience in the 1970s. Curated by Shand, photographers include gay activist and photojournalist Dan Nicoletta, Yeli Sanchez, Rick Dillenbeck, Gina Hall, and Lily Marnell. Photos span the gayborhood's hippie communes, street life in the blossoming queer mecca and intimate moments between friends and lovers.
Nicoletta, who was a close friend of Milk and worked at Castro Camera in the 1970s, helped Shand unearth the photos, and text panels showing dialogues between the two illuminate what life was like in the neighborhood during the burgeoning Gay Rights movement. There's also personal ephemera on display, like a postcard from Milk to his lover Scott Smith and an envelope from Castro Camera, deepening the connection between show and space.
Some photos have obvious and powerful historical value, like contact sheets of Sanchez' photos from the White Night Riots following the lenient sentencing of Dan White in May 1979 for the assassinations of Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Dillenbeck's reprinted images showing drag and the Castro Street Fair are colorful reminders that the joy and the struggle have often been simultaneous for queers. And a photo from 1975 by Jeanne Dieres Carlise 'Daniel, Harvey & Dean' shows Nicoletta with a toy gun pointed at Milk in play certainly has a different meaning after his murder.
Perhaps the most extraordinary finds are the erotic male photos by Milk himself, which are both softly beautiful and uninhibited in their male-on-male gaze. We have a tendency to turn slain leaders into martyrs, and martyrs into saints, thus erasing the human being. In the photos, you see the very real and human desire of Milk and also his artistry, the intimate black and white images of men embracing (and more) have a Peter Hujar quality that makes you hope for another discovery by Nicoletta.
Downtown, Jonathan Carver Moore's group exhibition 'To Be Seen' shows work by Black queer artists and asks, 'Can a person be Black and queer at the same time? Or must we always conceal one part of who we are at all times?' It's a dichotomy LGBTQ people with intersecting identities often feel, and it's a perfect theme for Moore to explore as a gallerist who has made exhibiting LGBTQ, female and artists of color a cornerstone of his program.
The show spans sculpture, painting, works on paper and photography with artists including April Bey, Eric Hart Jr., Ramekon O'Arwisters, Lulu Mhlana and Khari Johnson.
Bey's mixed media works are among the most attention grabbing. 'Atlantica Magazine: How to push your Bloodclat Chest, So Phucking High,' from 2024, a CMYK halftone hand-printed image transfer with a metallic vinyl wrapped frame tells the story of the Bahamian-American interdisciplinary artist's Afrofuturist series that place her as an alien from the planet Atlantica, with two glamorous extraterrestrial subjects starring us down.
Hart's photo from 2019, 'When I Think About Power, No. 13,' shows a young Black man in Converse sneakers and a white button-down shirt holding a skateboard on the roof of a white car driven by two other like-dressed Black men. There's a fierceness in the central figure's eyes, and a quiet confidence. His pose references and subverts historic images of 'night riding' or 'whitecapping,' the racist patrols by white southerners meant to intimidate Black citizens.
Johson's 'Onsen uu,' a 2025 watercolor, colored paper and other mixed media work on a cutout of watercolor paper is one of the most sensual of the show. It depicts two Black men in a bathing tub, a reference to gay bathhouse culture: One man emerges from the water while the other reclines. The scale and fineness of detail make it a standout.
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