BURY ME in SHOC KING PINK captures the "politik und party" of queer culture in the German capital, where the line between the two is thin. Motivated by my interests in queer theory and politics, I set out to photograph the birthplace of modern gay identity.
In Berlin, I discovered queer communities structured as distinct collectives reminiscent of those in the US during the 1960s, with identities based on this spirit of separatism. While politics are interwoven with everyday life in the form of solidarity parties and protests that incorporate live performance and music (and confetti), there is no national movement for LGBTQ rights. Paradoxically, Berliners are progressive and forward-thinking in their views about sexuality, and yet Paragraph 175 criminalizing homosexuality was only stricken from German law in 1994. In 2017, convictions under this provision were finally annulled by the Bundestag, the same year that marriage rights were attained at long last.
I am fascinated by the contradictions of queer community, culture, and identity in Berlin. While privacy is paramount, and photography especially suspect in queer spaces, queer identification is at the same time reflected in a ubiquitous textual element—the city's vibrant street art and graffiti—both matter-of-factly and metaphorically. BURY ME in SHOC KING PINK captures this ironic tendency, with ads and posters functioning as portraits and documentation of proclamations of identity through tattoos and signage.
Language is clearly used to categorize, as it was in the late 19th century with the first political “coming out” in Berlin, and yet there is no word for "queer" in German but "queer." LGBTQ culture is both marked by the separatism of collectives and squats and widely accepted by the majority of Germans. There are no political movements for LGBTQ rights, and yet daily life is exceedingly political. My work is a visual account of my immersion in the Berlin queer scene that captures these paradoxes.
In Berlin, I discovered queer communities structured as distinct collectives reminiscent of those in the US during the 1960s, with identities based on this spirit of separatism. While politics are interwoven with everyday life in the form of solidarity parties and protests that incorporate live performance and music (and confetti), there is no national movement for LGBTQ rights. Paradoxically, Berliners are progressive and forward-thinking in their views about sexuality, and yet Paragraph 175 criminalizing homosexuality was only stricken from German law in 1994. In 2017, convictions under this provision were finally annulled by the Bundestag, the same year that marriage rights were attained at long last.
I am fascinated by the contradictions of queer community, culture, and identity in Berlin. While privacy is paramount, and photography especially suspect in queer spaces, queer identification is at the same time reflected in a ubiquitous textual element—the city's vibrant street art and graffiti—both matter-of-factly and metaphorically. BURY ME in SHOC KING PINK captures this ironic tendency, with ads and posters functioning as portraits and documentation of proclamations of identity through tattoos and signage.
Language is clearly used to categorize, as it was in the late 19th century with the first political “coming out” in Berlin, and yet there is no word for "queer" in German but "queer." LGBTQ culture is both marked by the separatism of collectives and squats and widely accepted by the majority of Germans. There are no political movements for LGBTQ rights, and yet daily life is exceedingly political. My work is a visual account of my immersion in the Berlin queer scene that captures these paradoxes.