Judith Watt spoke to Clive Hassell and Adam Levine, who set up a studio at Gay Pride that became the venue for interactive photographic theatre.
DRAG is alive and well and living in South Africa. That we know – but what is less well known is the cutting-edge gay subculture of cross dressing, body decoration and brazen exhibitionism.
These glorious hybrids – the staples of queer culture – are as much part of Johannesburg as kugels and buppies. And they are coming out into mainstream consciousness in the exHibitionism project of photographer Clive Hassall and journalist Adam Levin. At this year’s Gay Pride Rave, their studio in a back room of The Fort became a venue for the outrage, the androgyny, the homoeroticism, the tragedy and the beauty that make up the drama of left field queer culture.
“It’s important because most people don’t realise that a scene like this exists,” says Levin of the project. “It sets up a dialogue between the fringe and the mainstream and works towards a tolerance about embracing the extraordinary in people.”
He admits that it can be difficult, even for the gay and lesbian community: assistants sent out to find subjects to photograph waded through serried ranks of “straight”- looking gay men in stonewashed jeans and T- shirts. “A lot of the fags are upset by the extremity,” says Levin. “The femininity of drag freaks them out because those muscle queens want to be masculine.”
Last year’s Gay Pride Rave saw the start of the exHibitionism project, which has mushroomed into Clive [email protected]: the documentation of the rave and androgyny subcultures of Johannesburg. “Last year there was a slight feeling of uncertainty – although people had come together in an insulated environment. This year we did the same thing, but there was less paranoia. The studio became interactive theatre and the motivation was to make it part of the party. It’s really a very simple method, stills documentary photography that is totally honest. We put people in front of the lights and say `be yourselves’. The others stand round and applaud.”
Hassall now spends most of his non- commissioned time photographing Jo’burg’s urban nocturnal youth cultures. Fascinated by the beauty of androgyny, this straight father of two is as important to the chronicling of urban subculture as Brassai was in Twenties and Thirties Paris and Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting and Ecstasy, is right now. And yet, despite the high quality of his work, no one has come forward to sponsor it. The drag pictures of Madame Costello’s ball are regarded as a national treasure, but what is shown in exHibitionism project photographs is regarded as disturbing.
“We live in such a violent and aggressive society. There’s absolutely no need for it. Who has the right to judge a subculture that does no harm to people? Society needs to look at this generation and learn from it.” Alas, few have the courage to look at the mirror and see the picture which is themselves.