The artists shown here work with queer histories and visual culture to make lives that have been hidden or suppressed visible. These approaches are as varied as individual queer experiences, often disrupting readers’ expectations of the physical book form to play against heteronormative preconceptions about their content.
Jack Pierson
Tomorrow's Man
North Vancouver, BC: Presentation House Gallery; Toronto, ON: Bywater Bros. Editions, 2013
In this series of artists’ books, Pierson combines found imagery with work by other current artists and writers, celebrating visual culture around male beauty and masculinity from more than half a century. “The title, Tomorrow’s Man, comes from an infamous bodybuilding magazine from the 1950s and ‘60s. Reappropriating the publication’s title as well as its retro bodybuilding aesthetic, Pierson takes viewers on a dizzying visual journey.” (Quotation from the publisher’s website.)
UNC Library Catalog: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb8405571
Zoe Leonard & Cheryl Dunye
Fae Richards Photo Archive
San Francisco: Artspace Books, c1996
Released to accompany Cheryl Dunye’s landmark film The Watermelon Woman – about a young Black lesbian director researching an uncredited actress from a 1930s movie -- The Fae Richards Photo Archive presents a fictitious but convincing scrapbook of photos detailing the life of the title character. As well as showing the evolution of Richards’ career, tender snapshots capture her home life with longtime partner, June Walker.
UNC Library Catalog: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb3187009