I have discovered Sam Vale’s photographic series Latent: A Hidden History when on show at Sydney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury, in Spring 2017, exhibited in parallel to a solo show of Claude Cahun’s work.

I have been deeply fascinated from the dialogue with my series Again He Holds Me by the Hand, in particular on the parallel intention of uncover and preserve the gay affection hidden in photographic archives as also about the different methodology we have used.

In Latent the abstraction of the subject play a conceptual and aesthetical tribute on the invisibility of such affection in the public spaces of that precise historical period: the gaze of those man crossing each other’s path as their physical proximities are poetical elaboration of the queer epistemological closet. Sam is leaving us in a space of uncertainty that talks about the historical and geographical context, theatre of those photographs, as much as the unexpressed desire that was cultivated by so many queer lives on those days.

Both series dig to unveil not-yet manifested possibilities, and work into re-claiming gestures and spaces as queer, suggesting evidence as secondary to the establishment of an overlooked historical narrative.