Cate Barry Photos
In the first photo, the two people in the image are coming in close, breathless, passionate, ready for a kiss. The intention is completely serious, even formal. It makes the next picture feel almost jarring. It’s the same couple, but where there was tension, there’s now relaxation. Where their brows were furrowed, there’s now laughter. Are the pictures separated by a minute or an hour? How long does it take for the mood to change? How long does it take for the photographer’s subjects to let their guard down?
And is it OK for us to see them like this?
These questions emerge in Queer Joy: LGBTQ Portraits in Pairs, a series of pairs of photographs running now at the Ives Gallery in the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library on Elm Street through Nov. 15. “This exhibit focuses on LGBTQ and gender non-conforming subjects and explores performance, queer representation, and ‘breaking’ (involuntarily showing vulnerability) in front of the lens,” the accompanying notes explain. The New Haven-based photographer, Cate Barry, “is interested in how and why subjects feel ‘seen’ in photographs, the ways in which we front, and what happens when we lose control.”
“The first in every pair shows a person or couple posing, self-conscious, performing identity the way we all do,” the notes continue. “The second in the pair shows the same person caught off-guard in genuine laughter. The duality offers a musing on performative identity and, simply, a reminder to the outside world that queer folks are not tragic. They are bright, fun, capable of joy and humor, often in love, and while undeniably affected by patriarchal, misogynistic structures of oppression, they are not defined by them.”
In short, Barry’s lens and the concept behind it gives the subjects their humanity. But as Barry well knows, taking the photographs also renders the subjects vulnerable — not only when they let down their personal guard, but when they appear in front of the camera at all. LGBTQ rights have come a very long way in America, and especially in a progressive place like New Haven, there’s a lot of acceptance and even celebration of queer culture. But prejudice still exists. There are still people who don’t accept LGBTQ folks. To be out in public is still taking a risk.
So there’s bravery in taking pictures like this, which puts an edge on Barry’s explorations of the subjects’ vulnerability. Taking someone’s picture involves trust — a trust that Barry has clearly built with her subjects. Barry has withheld the subjects’ names, but we get to see both the public faces they present to the camera and the unguarded joyful faces that they share with the ones they love and a camera they trust. In putting these pictures up, that trust is extended to us, the viewers, too. It’s a privilege, and one that we in New Haven should not take for granted — even as it makes room for more joy.
Queer Joy: LGBTQ Portraits in Pairs runs at the Ives Gallery of the New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St., through Nov. 15. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.