To Wear Your (Little Queer) Heart
Words and photography by EM MONFORTE
Musing on the lives of strangers and the particularities of their personal spaces has been the driving force behind my photographic practice for the past decade. I perceive my subjects' conscious and unconscious choices of self presentation as portals into each person's emotional world. There is so much vulnerability in the way people self-fashion their home and their appearance. I liken the experience to being invited to read a page in their diary when I gaze upon their unmade bed, the framed photograph they love of themselves on the dresser, or yesterday’s clothes left in a pile on the floor.
In my work, I play within the space between who I imagine my subjects to be and how they choose to present themselves. By directing their facial expressions, body language, style of dress and the arrangement of space, my portraits depict a collaborative fantasy rather than a true reality.
In late 2021, the focal point of my work rapidly evolved when I first encountered a subculture of queer youth in Los Angeles that seized my heart. I continually find myself drawn back to these subjects again and again—committed to representing my community with care and authenticity.
For as long as I can remember, queerness has felt harmfully framed solely as an act of sex and desire between two queer bodies. With this heteronormative perspective comes the insidious lack of recognition that our queerness is our own—living and breathing within each of us—no matter our attraction or intimacy.
As I came to know this younger community of queer people, I was struck by their self-assuredness in their identities. This certainty in their queerness emerged through their external expression: painted faces, daggered jewelry, visible scars, dancing poles, and graffitied walls. Through nonlinear, arresting visual representation and determination to live as open-hearted as the soul can bear, comes the extreme beauty of knowing oneself. In my proximity to their bravery I have watched my relationship to my own identity flourish beyond what I knew possible.
The intentional surreality in this body of work derives from my desire to present these young people as architects of an existence beyond what reality has to offer. I am aware that each of my subjects may not feel as if they alone are able to create something new, but as a web of human beings doing this work of self expression, they hold immense revolutionary power. Each portrait is a fusion of who these people are and who I dream them to be—reflecting the power I believe them to possess. They are symbols of bravery, change, and resistance.