Kirstyn Russell

Kirstyn Russell received her BFA from New York University and her MFA from

California College of the Arts. She received the Cadre Grant to produce 10 images from the series Where We Are Not Known as postcards and mailed them to 75 recipients. The work was reproduced in Capricious Magazine and written about in Make/Shift Magazine. She was a speaker at the Society for Photographic Education. Kirstyn is a Professor of Photography at San Joaquin Delta College.

 

Where We Are Not Known

Is there room for queer spaces in areas where it may not be safe to be queer? Over a decade ago I started looking at gender expression and queerness in landscape and architecture. I started photographing queer spaces in rural, suburban and abandoned urban places. I found that often you see more rainbows on the muffler shop than on the local gay bars. As I traveled throughout the US and most recently Central California and Mojave, I realized I was projecting queerness onto the stores, street signs and grocery stores I was driving past. In areas where overt queerness is hidden or the signifiers are stripped down and/or very removed, I see a trailer park called Rainbow Estates. By making these photographs I want to consider places that could easily be missed as you move from destination to destination.