With her book Queer Methodology for Photography the artist and writer Åsa Johannesson explores new approaches to making, thinking, and writing about queer photography. This book centres around 27 photographs produced by LGBTQ+ artists and presents different conceptual perspectives on queer photography, including representation, poetic writing, and formalism. In contrast to most existing literature on queer photography, this book focuses on artistic strategies to image making. The reader is invited on a journey that is both photographic and queer, amongst pixels and grains, double exposures, 3D sculpture, and Polaroid emulsions.
On the night, Åsa Johannesson will be in conversation with the artist Kairo Urovi, and TPG Curator José Neves, followed by a book signing.
Åsa Johannesson is an artist and writer based in London. Over the past two decades she has explored the possibilities of queer visual vocabulary within photography – a practice that intertwines queer documentary approaches with performative and formalist aesthetics. With her writing, Åsa intersects theoretical concepts from queer theory and new materialism with the logic of studio practice. The monograph Queer Methodology for Photography (Routledge, 2024) is her first book.
Kairo Urovi is a visual artist based between Essex and Shkoder (AL). With a focus on printed matter and community-led approaches, their work explores trans and diasporic experiences. Blending documentary and conceptual approaches, Urovi often reimagines archives and personal histories to question how identities are formed, seen and remembered. His work has been shown at Paris Photo, Ph Museum Days and Bazament Art Space.
José Neves is the Assistant Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery, where he actively contributes to shaping its exhibitions. Before this role, he was a curator at Belfast Exposed Photography in Northern Ireland, organising shows with artists like Jo Spence, Frits de Ridder, Arpita Shah, and Yvette Monahan. He earned a PhD in Photographic History from Ulster University in 2017, with a focus on photobook history. Prior to that, he studied Photographic History and Practice at De Montfort University in Leicester and worked as an Assistant Curator at the Wilson Centre for Photography in London. His interests include the history of photobooks, artist’s books, photographic printing techniques, and storytelling through images. Recently, he has been exploring how HIV/AIDS has been depicted in photography during the late 1980s and early 1990s.