Gender

Del LaGrace Volcano - genderqueer photographer

By Friction ⋅ September 11, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Atlanta Femme Mafia, Paris, Decature 2007 © Del LaGrace Volcano

Del LaGrace Volcano is important to us at Friction because he is a visual artist who has consistently produced challenging works for queer people and straight people alike. From the initially controversial Love Bites to the mainstream adoption of  his work in Sex and the City television series,  Del has remained attached to his feminist and queer politics. He has recently published Femmes of Power an exploration of queer femininity in collaboration Ulrika Dahl, femme activist and academic.

Why did you choose photography as your medium?
When I was a teenager I had no idea I would be interested in using photography as a medium for political activism or self expression. In 1976 I hitch-hiked around Europe for 6 months with my best friend Stacey, who had an old Rolliflex camera and I was impressed.

When I returned to my small town in California I enrolled at my local community college and took every photography and film class that was going and had the good fortune to find two excellent teachers who mentored me and nurtured my talent and enthusiasm. I quickly got jobs in photography and as I was entirely self supporting I needed to be able to do something I liked, was good at, and, could make money with as well. I became totally obsessed with photographic alchemy and history.

Photography as a medium is perfect for my personality and temperament. It allows me an excuse to develop relationships with all kinds of people and is something I can do alone, at my own pace, in my own way.

When you started to show your photos publicly how was your work received?
I started to exhibit from the early 80’s at one-night-only lesbian only events receiving positive feedback.   However in 1989 I was asked to curate an exhibition called The Lesbian Gaze at the Young Unknowns Gallery in London. I exhibited  (“The Ceremony”) my series of very romantic series of images. And because there was a bit of leather, rubber, a wedding veil, two tits and a Muir cap some of the more politically correct lesbians declined to exhibit with me. There seemed to be a real fear that these images which reflected the lives and sexual politics of myself and my friends would contaminate the larger lesbian social fabric.

My first book, LOVEBITES was banned by Sisterwrite, Gays the Word and Silvermoon bookstores, as well as by US Customs (for two weeks), but that only made people more curious enough to buy the book!

I have shown with some big names in many group exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world:Cindy Sherman; Robert Mapplethorpe; Gilbert & George; Paul McCarthy; John Coplans; Andy Warhol…you get the picture, right. Even thought it has given me another line in my CV, it doesn’t translate into sales. In these big shows only the ‘blue chip’ artists are written about or promoted or sold. Artists like myself give the exhibition ‘street cred’.

How has that committment to ‘otherness’ affected your access to funds?
My theory is that because I refuse to be (an)”other” victim and instead present both my self, my life story and the people who allow me to re-present them as heroes; to be admired, and desired, rather than ‘tolerated’ or ‘assimilated’ I don’t get funded or feted.

I have no respect for the way in which the mainstream media, the funding bodies and society in general treat those of us who are ‘other’. Let’s face it. Most people who are successful artists come from upper middle-class white backgrounds and it’s a closed shop.

Exceptions do occur and those exceptions make the members of the dominant class feel better about themselves. If they can have an Issac Julian or Jean-Michel Basquiat on their books then they feel themselves to be immune from charges of racism or elitism. Where are the queer women of colour in the mainstream art world? Where are the gender queer artists?

Why have you continued to work in the queer world when other peers have left it behind?
There’s a common perception that working from a subcultural position is reductive. That it is a (lesser) choice that no one would make if they could have popular, mainstream recognition. It’s certainly true that most of my peers who have become ‘famous’ and financially successful seem to have left the queer world behind them.

I remember working with Jeannette Winterson when she was coordinating September in the Pink, the first queer arts festival in London in 1984. She was quite politicized back then, in terms of both sexuality and class. But as she moved up the class ladder she pulled it up behind her.

If you’re white and rich it’s no longer important (to say) if you are a lesbian or not.  Annie Leibowitz, the celebrity photographer is a case in point.  To politicize either your gender or your sexuality is seen as passé and crass in the upper echelons of society. It seems that full human membership only exists for those who have the luxury of being classless (read: super rich), and colour blind (read: white)

First and foremost I am a political person. I refuse to allow my work to be commodified or to appeal to the lowest common denominator, lesbian or otherwise, in order to achieve financial success. But then again, I haven’t been tested. No corporate powers or fancy curators have come knocking on my door and for the most part I am still being asked to work for free. THAT is something I would like to see change in the queer world! We owe it to ourselves to be paid whenever possible and at the same time it’s important to give back to the communities that support us.

How has your gender and name change altered your relationship to the queer world and your subjects?
The name thing has always  been something that is a bit complicated but also fun and meaningful to me. I’ve had a number of names, legal and social, in my (ohmygod) five decades! And they’ve all felt right at the time.

If I had remained Della Grace (and relatively gender normative) would I have had a different trajectory into the ‘high art’ world? Is that something I even want?  We all face hundreds and thousands of life altering choices and what might have been or even what you think should have been is what it is now, because of those choices.

I could have been Debby Would,  a suburban mid-western Mormon housewife with grandkids already. I’m kind of happy about the way I’ve constructed my life.

What was the difference in working on Femmes of Power compared to The Drag King Book?
From a technical point of view it was easier to work on Femmes of Power than The Drag King Book simply because I was using a digital camera. This meant it was cheaper and lighter to transport the equipment around. On a personal level there was the challenge of my ‘masculine’ persona. Of course everyone I worked with knows me as a “herm” rather than a man or even a transman, BUT there are still levels on which we are all programmed to respond to masculinity, the voice, the visual cues and so with people who never knew me as “Della Grace” I had to work a bit harder to make sure that the dynamics between us weren’t re-creating the power imbalances that often exist between a ‘male’ photographer and female subject.

There were a couple of instances in the three years of making work that I felt these dynamics were present, usually in contexts where it wasn’t possible to spend time with people in the way I usually need to. I believe that those images don’t have the level of intimacy and engagement that I feel are important and consequently those images did not make it into the book.

When I worked with younger, queer femmes of colour, I became aware of myself as being not only more ‘male’ but more ‘white’. The history of colonialization , slavery and sexual violence means that a whole lotta baggage comes into the mix. If and when I am perceived as an older white male photographer making images of young, femme women of colour I do whatever I can to acknowledge, disrupt and disown the power vested in me through institutionalized cultural racism and sexism.

Although working this way does take a lot of time and energy it feels important to engage with the people I work with in as deep a way as each encounter will allow. And this is something I try to do with everyone I work with, not only queers of colour!

How do the images in Femmes of Power challenge how society views femininity?
If you look at the vast majority of images of women in the mainstream and lesbian and gay media what you see are images of women performing gender normativity. I call it the “skinny white chicks” syndrome. In this kind of image if a woman is looking back at the spectator (usually assumed to be a white male) it is to make sure he knows she’s available for immediate consumption. It’s true that there are now more women who are active in images rather than always passive, and that’s a good thing, but it’s still not happening enough.

I would also say that it is not the purpose of an individual photograph in Femmes of Power to challenge dominant images of femininity but one has to look at the book as a whole. One has to look at the collaborative process with the subjects, Ulrika (my collaborator)  and  the designer, Elina.

The process of creation of the images challenges conventional and sexist notions of what it means to be femme-ninist and queer. I’m a big fan of the back story and process is key in feminist pedagogy.

Symbolically and literally the images take up a lot of space. Filling public space with femme magnificence, be that making a trans-femme-nist political intervention in the corridors of a Swedish hospital  with Andy Candy or on a pool table in Decatur, Alabama with the Femme Mafia is not something nice girls were taught to do!

What’s next for you?
I’m in the research and development phase of a project that is about home, belonging, gender, immigration, identity and creating community across cultures. Can’t say more than that right now though! Stay tuned!

Links

Del LaGrace Volcano main website
Del LaGrace Volcano MySpace
Del LaGrace Volcano Facebook
Femmes of Power MySpace
Femmes of Power Facebook Group
Femmes of Power at Serpents Tail
Femmes of Power at Amazon

Tags: Del LaGrace Volcano, Femmes of Power, gender queer, Love Bites, photographer, sexual outlaw, The Drag King Book, Ulrika Dahl