For the past several years, Brooklyn artist and educator Matthew Leifheit has traveled the country visiting queer archives and photographing the lives of many people “who would otherwise be lost to history, for reasons ranging from homophobia to racial prejudice, sexism and AIDS.”
He found materials – from pictures and protest signs to letters and T-shirts – that document 20th century queer culture and identity in relation to the rise of the U.S. gay rights movement.
Matthew Leifheit, Desk of Paul Fasana, Stonewall National Museum & Archives, 2021, dye sublimation print
His photographic renderings of those LGBTQ+ archives are now on view in “Matthew Leifheit: Gay Archive,” a solo exhibition in the Crowell and West galleries, Feigenbaum Center for Visual Arts. The exhibition is curated by Rachel Stern, assistant professor of photography, with installation by Frank Rapant, photography and exhibition technician.
An opening reception is set for Thursday, Oct. 3, 4:30-6:30 p.m. Leifheit will give an artist talk on the same day at 12:50 p.m. in FCVA Room 204.
“During the 1970s and 80s, independent archives were established by LGBTQ Americans to collect materials that major institutions would not,” Leifheit noted.
Embracing the slow-moving and highly detailed eye of a large format camera, Leifheit brings the archives to life. The exhibition also includes “Sad Songs,” a looping video projection tucked inside a curtained chamber. As Leifheit describes, it is “a recital drawn from an ever expanding archive of gay men’s chorus performances from the decade before effective HIV/AIDS treatments became available in the United States, 1985-1995.”
“Gay Archive” asks the viewer to contemplate the value of keepsakes, and how histories are told, accessed and seen.
Students, in particular, “will experience the deeply personal and subjective nature of history-making and be asked to consider their experience of the past and their potential to structure their own movements, narratives and archives in the future,” Stern said.
A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the Yale School of Art, Leifheit teaches at MassArt, Pratt Institute and Yale and is editor-in-chief of the photography journal MATTE Magazine. His work has been featured in a range of leading national publications and exhibited internationally.
“Matthew Leifheit: Gay Archive” runs through Nov. 12.