Lola Flash

“I am black, queer, and female; those are the things that make me excited everyday to wake up and fight the world.”

At a proud 62 years old, bold photographer Lola Flash (she/they) has been at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for over three decades. Getting her start photographing LGBTQIA+ life during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the ‘80s, she experimented with a photo processing technique called cross-colour, which inverts traditional colors into saturated opposites. She actively participated in ACT UP and was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster (depicted above, left). She has since expanded her skills and built an incredibly successful career immortalizing the legacy of the LGBTQIA+ community and communities of color worldwide. Her practice confronts societal preconceptions of race, sexuality and gender, and more. She uses mainly a 4×5 film camera to capture the portraits of the aforementioned invisible, the “other.”

Flash earned their bachelor’s degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and their master’s from the London College of Printing in the UK. Flash has been featured in notable institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. They are currently the proud secretary of the Kamoinge Workshop, an African-American photography collective.

They have been featured in numerous publications, notably the New York Times and Dazed, among others. Discover some below!

Find her website here: http://www.lolaflash.com/

Image Credits

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