Åsa Johannesson — The Queering of Photography

Åsa Johannesson is an artist working across photography and writing. Over the past two decades she has explored the possibilities of queer visual vocabulary within photographic portraiture –  a practice that intertwines queer documentary approaches with performative formalist aesthetics.

The Queering of Photography (2015–2025), an ambitious long-term project, investigates the complex relationship between queer identity and photographic representation. Developed in collaboration with the London LGBTQ+ community and at artist residencies at the British School at Rome, The Queering of Photography presents a meticulous study of pose, gaze, and composition.

Rooted in the conventions of classical studio portraiture and produced with a large format plate camera, the work comprises formal yet playfully subversive photographs of human figures, Roman statues, and studio props. Through rigour and playfulness, Johannesson cultivates a distinctly queer sensibility within the photographic process – one that challenges and reimagines how identity and desire are represented. The project’s title underscores this strategy: a process of “queering” that reclaims playfulness as a critical mode of inquiry, foregrounding overlooked queer gestures and aesthetics within photographic traditions and histories.