“Photo Realness: The Queer Aesthetics of Photography” | San Francisco

Schlomer Haus Gallery presents “Photo Realness: The Queer Aesthetics of Photography,” a group show curated by Christopher Tradowsky featuring Zackary Drucker, Clifford Prince King, Matt Lipps, Alec Marchant, Joe Sinness and Suzanne Wright. The six artists in “Photo Realness” are not all, or not strictly, photographers. Yet each artist exploits the dynamism of the photographic medium to slightly different ends, through candid and formal portraiture, intimate reportage, faux-fashion tableaux, appropriated imagery, archiving and collage, and photorealist drawing. With an emphasis on portraiture, “Photo Realness” explores the playfulness of photography and the ease with which, in the 21st century, this ubiquitous medium allows for the public projection of a private self. “Photo Realness” celebrates the ways photography helps queers do what queers do best: playing with the boundaries of gender and sexuality, testing and expanding them beyond norms and expectations, discovering new ways to live more openly, more expansively, more queerly.

Christopher Tradowsky is a writer, art historian, and artist. His fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, and his criticism and scholarly work have appeared in the CAA Art Journal. He lives in Minnesota and teaches at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design).

Opening reception is Friday, September 9th, 5pm to 9pm. “Photo Realness: The Queer Aesthetics of Photography” runs through Saturday, October 15th // Schlomer Haus Gallery, 2128 Market St., schlomerhaus.com, Gallery Hours: Tue – Sat 12-6p; By Appointment; IG: schlomer_haus_gallery; T: (415) 275-0960; E: info@schlomerhaus.com