The QUEER|ART COMMUNITY PORTRAIT PROJECT is an annual commission of digital portraits, celebrating artists who are part of our diverse and vibrant community.
For the Queer|Art Community Portrait Project, artists from across different disciplines and generations gather once a year to participate in a marathon photoshoot event, sitting for their portraits as representatives of the Queer|Art community. Over time, the project will chart nuances of generational and personal growth within the community—as many artists return and new artists are welcomed into the mix—all seen through the lens of a different photographer each year.
2018 GALLERY
Photographer: LIA CLAY
The commission for the 2018 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project was awarded to Lia Clay. The open emotionality and elegant expressiveness of her portraiture work, alongside her commitment to celebrating a diverse body of queer and trans subjects, inspired us here at Queer|Art and made her a natural choice for the project. Lia honored our community with stunning black & white portraits of more than 50 Queer|Art artists taken at The LGBT Center in the West Village.
Click on any picture below to learn more about the person and their affiliation to Queer|Art.
These images should not be reprinted or linked without permission, and credit to the photographer and the Queer|Art Community Portrait Project must always be included. All requests for reusing any of these photographs should be directed to info@queer-art.org.
ABOUT LIA CLAY
Lia Clay is a transgender portrait and fashion photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Clay was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, and graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a degree in photography. She went on to get her graduate degree in fashion photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work seeks to demystify the portrayal of transgender individuals within the media, photographing them from a place of honesty and respect. She often references growing up queer in the South, and seeks the natural light in found spaces that, for her, evoke the places she first started photographing in her grandmother’s backyard.
In 2017, Clay exhibited at Milk Studios, Brooklyn’s Photoville, and in a group show alongside Nan Goldin and William Wegmen at Colette. Her image featuring a trans woman standing on a New York beach was featured in Aperture magazine’s “Future Gender” issue, guest edited by Zackary Drucker and Kate Bornstein. She shot the 2017 and 2018 covers of Luis Venegas’ Candy magazine, and photographed Hillary Clinton for Teen Vogue. In her published work, she pushes to pursue her ideals of portraiture in an industry oversaturated with cisgender perspectives, and to choose projects that push for diversity both in front of and behind the camera