queer polaroids by Alexander Rose, installment one

When I was a kid it never occurred to me pictures of queers existed. Vampiric, no mirrors, all in the dark. So far as I knew. But even then, there was a secret proliferation of photos of my kind of people, and their bodies, and their sex, and their joy. Long before an explicitly gay market for porn would become mainstream the majority of documentation would be private, and often, on Polaroids.

Instant film offered some independence from the prying eyes of photo labs. As a member of a generation that can access a tsunami of flesh on tumblr, it’s hard to imagine how precious those photos must have been. What I figure is when I am a bit older, and the liquidity of the internet has long made it impossible to really see my past, I can hold a few pieces of light in my hands.

Here’s a few from my series of Queer Polaroids . Please be in touch if you’d like to sit: http://misterrose.carbonmade.com/

and RECAPS editors pull some queer polaroids from the archive: