The Queer Spine of Literary Modernism

Berenice Abbott, Portrait of Jane Heap, c. 1928, printed 1982, gelatin silver print. The Clark, gift of A&M Penn Photography Foundation by Arthur Stephen Penn and Paul Katz, 2007.2.218

Berenice Abbott believed that writing and photography have a similar aim: to seize, describe, and digest the fullness of the lived experience through "impassioned realism." Perhaps this affinity between writing and photography is why she befriended and photographed so many avant‐garde writers, many of whom (perhaps not coincidentally) were queer.

Abbott's photographs of modernist authors and publishers living in Paris reveal the enormity of the contributions queer people made to literature. Their ability to live and love outside of the perceived heterosexual norm is reflected in the writing they produced and published, which fearlessly challenged standing literary conventions.

The following quote from Berenice Abbott speaks not only to her ethos of "living" photography, but also to the perseverance of queer joy: "Living photography builds up, does not tear down. It acclaims the dignity of man […] It sings a song of life—not death." —Berenice Abbott, from a talk given at the Aspen Institute, Conference on Photography, October 6, 1951