Heather Renée Russ
queer multidisciplinary artist in New York
I document the People’s Beach, a historically queer, trans and BIPOC haven at Riis Beach in NYC that is now under threat from climate change and development. Working outdoors, I use a scanner I converted into a high res camera, queering the tradition of landscape photography focusing on the microcosm of coastal flora. I see symbiotic systems of care existing in seaside ecologies as parallel to the mutual aid so critically important for queer communities to thrive.
Working outdoors, I capture coastal botanicals, like Seaside goldenrod and seaweed, alongside femme detritus left behind by beachgoers, such as wig hair. All of the imagery is created during the capture, which unfolds over long durations, allowing skylight and detail to accumulate. During the long exposure, I collage materials and manipulate light with my body.The machine fails to understand the choreography of my brightly painted fingernails, producing rainbow glitches that I see both as metaphor for the anxiety many of us are feeling and reminder of the rainbowed spaces we create, spaces like the People’s Beach that often exist outside the understanding of the patriarchal machine.
In recent works, I extend this process beyond the shoreline, photographing botanicals growing in other queer sites, such as outdoor cruising spots and queer land projects. I also photograph plants grown by queer femme and trans people of all genders as part of mutual efforts to cope and heal from cumulative stress. The imagery is fragmented and rainbowed to reflect the complexity of queer experience, our lives refracted, disrupted and lived beautifully in ways the “machine” cannot fully parse.
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