Baltimore voguers are having a moment
Above: Gabrielle L’Bell Revlon, from “The Fire Flies [Baltimore / Paris],” at the Meneret gallery in New York City through May 18.
Artist Frédéric Nauczyciel was in Baltimore in 2011 on a grant from the French government when he stumbled across some voguers performing in a parking lot.
That encounter turned into a months-long photographic project, a gallery showing in New York running now through May 18th and a piece in Slate this week.
The photos show the voguers not in the moody lighting of a club (the culture was born in the New York ballroom scene of the 1960s), but in their Baltimore backyards and neighborhoods in the bright light of day.
“Voguers highlight the ballroom scene’s continued relevance as an underground culture, one that serves as a platform for self-expression for queer people of color in urban communities across the globe,” Jordan G. Teicher writes in Slate.
Nauczyciel told Teicher the title of the show comes from a metaphor used by Italian filmmaker Paolo Pasolini about the destruction of the “unique spirit of the people” by “bourgeois consumerism.”
Kory Goose Revlon. (Photo by Frédéric Nauczyciel, from “The Fire Flies” at Ju;lie Meneret Contemporary Art.)
“If you don’t have artists in a country, if there’s no space to create, no place to invent something new, then there’s no space in a country for people to invent themselves,” Nauczyciel said.
“If you don’t have grey areas where something different or new is possible, then the culture is dying.”
“The Fire Flies [Baltimore / Paris]” is showing at Julie Meneret Contemporary Art (133 Orchard Street, New York, N.Y. 10002) through May 18. Hours: Wed-Sat 11-6, Sun 12-6. Gallery closed Friday through Sunday for Easter. 212-477-5269.