All posts filed under: Photography

John Weiss Was Here

March 28, 2024
by Atticus Hawk
Activist Histories / Gay History / Kink Cultures / Photography / Queer History / The Gays Did What Now?

Artist, teacher, bon vivant, “The Best Gay Dad Ever”, dog's best friend; John Wiess (1946-2017) was many things to many people. John was an artist and middle-school art teacher up in North Bay, a spirited host who adamantly refused to cook a single thing and such a gregarious misanthrope that he actively sprinted away from people he didn’t want to talk to in public. Kirk Cederwahl spent years sprinting after a bolting John; and with good reason. Kirk was John’s boy and John was Kirk’s daddy.

Beefcake: An Exhibition on Physique Photography at the University of Toronto

August 11, 2023
by Juan Carlos Mezo-González
Gay History / Photography / Public Humanities / Queer History

Daniel Laurin, a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto, recently launched an exhibition that offers a glimpse into a rich visual archive of mid-twentieth-century erotic photography. Titled Beefcake, the exhibition features 45 black and white photographs, 17 periodicals, and three photo albums that have one thing in common: the celebration of the male body. Most of these materials date from the mid-twentieth century, they were produced in the United States, and they circulated widely […]

Field Trip to the Palace

November 18, 2021
by Aisling Murphy
Collaboratory News / Photography / Pussy Palace Project

For the first time in-person since the Pussy Palace Oral History Project began in early 2021, the project team met to explore the grounds of Club Toronto (now Oasis Aqualounge), the former gay men’s bathhouse that once hosted the Pussy Palace — a series of exclusive bathhouse events for queer women and trans people.   Alisha Stranges and Elio Colavito (Co-Oral Historians), Ayo Tsalithaba (Creative Producer), and I (Aisling Murphy, the PPOHP’s Social Media Assistant) met, coffees and cameras in hand, to explore the grounds of […]

Pussy Palace Oral History Project: Gallant’s Box

May 28, 2021
by Andy Huynh
Collaboratory News / Lesbian History / Photography / Pussy Palace Project / Trans History

Did you know that our search for ephemeral evidence is well underway? We recently received a box full of raid-related artifacts from one of our narrators. We’ve got court transcripts, settlement minutes, Pussy Palace event flyers, and fundraiser buttons (among other amazing things)! We’re excited to spend some time with this stuff. Stay tuned for updates on what we uncover.  More of The Arquives hereMore of The Pussy Palace Oral History Project here Check out our Twitter […]

Archivo De La Memoria Trans

May 14, 2021
by Andy Huynh
Archiving Oral History / Collaboratory News / Community-based Oral History / Gay History / Oral History / Photography / Trans History

“Archivo de la Memoria Trans: el proyecto colaborativo que reunió 10.000 fotos.” The Archivo de la Memoria Trans, translated as The Archive of Trans Memory, has collected over 10,000 photos of Trans Latinx folk. According to La Nacion, the project began as a Facebook group to share old photographs of trans people amongst one another, as a way to honour and commemorate queer and trans people before them. The group allowed people to reconnect with […]

Tangible Traces: Searching for the Pussy Palace Polaroids

April 16, 2021
by Alisha Stranges
Photography / Pussy Palace Project

Did you know that the 2000 Pussy Palace had an instant photo room? On the fourth floor of the Palace, a sign reading “porn/photo room” directed patrons in two equally playful directions: towards a room for screening pornography and/or towards a room for having Polaroids taken to document one’s night at the bathhouse (Blair 163; Vogels paras. 10-13). In our most recent oral history interview, Carlyle Jansen, one of the founding members of the Toronto Women’s Bathhouse Committee, shared that the use of […]