Subtle Grace: The New Queer Photo Exhibit Worthy of a Double Take

The LGBTQ Photo Exhibit Not to Miss

If your idea of LGBTQ photography is shirtless Instagram boys at the beach, then close your apps, holster your phones, and get yourself to New York's Leslie Lohman Gallery before summer ends. The site's refreshing exhibit Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography eschews thirst traps for a far more varied and modern view of what it means to be queer. Curators Matthew Jensen and Ka-Man Tse have gathered the work of 12 highly diverse artists -- including Groana Melendez, Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr., Ryan James Caruthers, and Mikaela Lungulov-Klotz -- and their abstract and figurative images show a cooler, less cliched vision than oiled abs. Collectively, what they provide is an intimate window, through which we see something rare for any gallery's walls: intersections of age, race, class, gender, and body type.

Mikaela Lungulov-Klotz, Jane's

Courtesy of Leslie Lohman Gallery

Groana Melendez, Untitled (Mona Lisa)

Courtesy of Leslie Lohman Gallery