Queer history is fragile. Especially in places marked by war, censorship, and political transition.
Clubs close. Magazines disappear. Activist groups dissolve. People emigrate. Archives get destroyed.
So how do you preserve something that was often hidden to begin with?
Photography helps.
Even if formal institutions ignored queer life, personal photo collections survived. Boxes under beds. Negatives in drawers. Digital files saved on old computers.
These images become unofficial archives.
They challenge the idea that history only lives in state documents. Sometimes history lives in a blurry photo from a basement party in 1996.
Archiving queer life isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about legitimacy. It’s about saying: this mattered.
And honestly? Without photography, so much of this would be gone.
The camera didn’t just capture moments. It protected them.
