Photographing Queer Joy: A Lesbian Photographer’s Perspective
What Photographing Queer Joy Means to Me
I don’t photograph queer couples and families as an outsider looking in. I photograph from inside the experience.
As a lesbian, I know what it feels like to look for signs that tell you a space is safe. To pay attention to the words someone uses. To wonder whether you can mention your partner without the conversation changing. And I know the relief that comes when you realize you don't have to think about any of that.
That experience inevitably follows me into my work as a photographer.
When I photograph LGBTQ+ couples and families, I’m not trying to check an inclusivity box or make a statement about how welcoming my business is. I’m a gay woman who genuinely wants more queer people to have photographs of their lives, relationships, families, and ordinary happiness. Because historically, we haven't always gotten to have that.
So much of queer history has involved hiding relationships, carefully choosing language, or being left out of the photographs and stories that were considered worth preserving.
I can't change that history but I can make sure that isn't what happens here.
Here, your relationship isn't something I work around.
Your family doesn't require an explanation.
Your love doesn't need to be translated into something more familiar.
It gets to simply be the story.
Queer Joy Doesn’t Have to be a Big Moment
When we talk about queer joy, it's easy to picture the big things. Weddings. Pride. Proposals. Coming out. Milestones.
And those things absolutely deserve to be photographed.
But some of my favorite expressions of queer joy are much quieter than that.
It's two women walking through the woods teasing each other between photographs. It's someone's dog interrupting a perfectly good romantic moment because they spotted a squirrel or want kisses of their own. It's a couple sprawled across their couch together at home. Two moms trying to keep up with their toddler. Someone instinctively reaching for their partner's hand while we're walking to another part of the location.
Those moments aren't meaningful because they're dramatically different from anyone else's.
They're meaningful because queer people haven't always gotten to see our ordinary lives treated as something worth documenting.
Sometimes queer joy is incredibly unremarkable. And I mean that in the best possible way.
You should get to have photographs of your partner making you laugh. Your kids climbing all over you. Your dog wedging themselves directly between the two of you. The house you're building a life in together.
Not because those moments need to prove anything but because they’re yours.
Being Understood Changes the Experience
There can be a particular kind of relief in realizing you don't have to explain yourself to the person photographing you.
You don't have to wonder how they'll react when you mention your wife.
You don't have to figure out whether their questionnaire's “bride and groom” language applies to you.
You don't have to worry that posing is going to turn into figuring out which person is supposed to take the traditionally masculine or feminine role.
And you certainly don't have to perform a particular version of queerness for me.
I already know there isn't one.
Some couples are incredibly affectionate. Others lovingly roast each other for an hour.
Some people want photographs that feel romantic and intimate. Some want movement, chaos, dogs, kids, beer, coffee, or an activity that gives them something to do besides stare lovingly into each other's eyes.
Usually it's a mixture of all of the above.
My job isn't to make your relationship look like my idea of queer love. It's to pay attention long enough to understand what your relationship looks like.
I Don't Photograph Relationships According to Gender Roles
One of the things I've become increasingly intentional about in my work is the language I use when directing couples.
Traditional photography posing can be surprisingly gendered.
One person leads. One person is held. One person puts their hands here while the other does something else. And a lot of that posing was developed around assumptions about straight couples and traditional gender roles.
That doesn't particularly interest me.
Even with heterosexual couples, I'd rather learn how two people naturally interact than assign them characters.
With queer couples especially, I'm never trying to figure out who plays which role.
Maybe you're both soft with each other.
Maybe one of you is much more physically affectionate.
Maybe you switch who reaches for whom depending on the moment.
That's far more interesting to me than trying to recreate a pose I've seen a hundred times.
So rather than forcing you into positions, I use movement, activities, prompts, conversation, and observation. I'll give you direction when you need it, but I'm always watching for what happens in between.
That's usually where the photographs start feeling like you.
Queer Families Deserve to See Themselves, Too
Queer representation in photography often focuses heavily on couples and weddings.
But queer life doesn't end there.
There are two moms packing snacks and chasing their kid through a field.
There are queer couples bringing their dogs to a session because those dogs have been there through moves, relationships, breakups, marriage, and every version of adulthood in between.
There are LGBTQ+ parents documenting pregnancies, adoptions, graduations, anniversaries, and completely ordinary family seasons.
There are chosen families.
There are single queer parents.
There are families that don't fit neatly into the structures photographers have traditionally assumed.
I want those stories in front of my camera too.
Not as an exception.
As family photography.
Period.
I Photograph What I Know, But Your Story Is Still Yours
Being a lesbian gives me context.
It doesn't mean I've lived every queer person's experience.
Our community isn't a monolith, and I never want my own identity to make me assume I already understand someone else's story.
What it does give me is an awareness.
I understand why language matters.
I understand why safety matters.
I understand why someone might look through a photographer's website for evidence that people like them have actually been welcomed there before.
And I know the feeling of being understood without having to over-explain.
That's the environment I want to create during my sessions.
You don't have to arrive ready to represent the LGBTQ+ community.
You don't have to be visibly queer.
You don't have to make your session political, profound, or meaningful to anyone outside of the people in the photographs.
You just get to show up.
Why Photographing Queer Joy Matters to Me
Photography is one of the ways we decide what gets remembered.
We photograph birthdays. Weddings. New babies. Graduations. Anniversaries. Vacations. Sunday afternoons with the dog we've had for thirteen years.
We make pictures because somewhere inside us, we know life changes.
And I want queer people to have all of those photographs.
Not only the major milestones.
Not only the ones that make a statement.
I want walls covered in photographs of two dads and their kids. Albums full of lesbian weddings. Pictures of queer couples and the dogs they adopted together. Family photos that kids will inherit decades from now and recognize immediately as home.
There was a time when many queer people had to hide these parts of their lives from photographs.
I get to do the opposite.
I get to make them visible.
And even more importantly, I get to photograph them as exactly what they are: life.
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If you want photos that honor your joy, your softness, and your story, I would be honored to document it.