164 culturedmag.com
NON-CONFORMING
NARRATIVES
BY EM GALLAGHER
"You can embrace a term like 'queer' and
not be defined by it," Res says as I leave their studio.
This idea is a throughline between the practices of five
emerging photographers—Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Lia
Clay, Naima Green, Matthew Morrocco and Res—who
represent the vanguard of the medium. Their recent
work probes concerns shared by many young artists:
How can the intersections of identity be expressed
through an art practice? How should we navigate
visually-driven social media platforms? How can artists
communicate queerness differently in personal versus
commercial and commissioned work? And what are the
possibilities of expressing oneself as an individual while
identifying with a larger community?
Attempting to fit these five young artists into a box
would be impossible. Queerness refuses form in
contemporary photography, and that very mutability
injects images with a newfound energy.
