Excavating Perfection: The Photos of Carolyn Gentile

Last night I met up with Denver photographer Carolyn Gentile at the Vine Street Pub, a friendly restaurant with an arsenal of handcrafted beers. It’s Stout Month at the Pub. Over beer and burgers, we discussed her latest photography

Traditionally, Gentile’s work displays a deep commitment to portraiture as she documents friends and lovers flirting, sipping coffee, and living lives of extraordinary beauty. Her portrait work serves as a family photo-album of Denver’s radical, underground, queer community.

“I’m still really amazed at getting to look at the details of how beautiful people are and how perfect everybody is physically,” She said.

Excavating aesthetic perfection in her subjects’ mundane rituals, she finds power in quiet moments of intimacy and solitude. Her work documents strong emotions, occasionally light-hearted, but often grave. Like the music of The Mountain Goats or the films of Jonas Mekas, Gentile’s photographs find ecstasy within private worlds.

Recently, she has taken her work from the domestic to the streets.

“Lately, I’ve been exploring street photography and am trying to work out how you do that in a casual way and still have formal success,” She said. “I’ve been going around neighborhoods taking portraits of streets, houses, alleys, and people in public settings.

Gentile handles her subjects like a fly on the wall, a fly who happens to rigorously compose images and madly loves its surroundings.

“I think there are so many beautiful neighborhoods in Denver and I love getting that on film.”

Whether she’s scrutinizing the rotating door at the 15^th Street Telegraph Building or obsessing over primary colors in abandoned alleys, she continues to document people within neglected landscapes.

“There are so many beautiful buildings in Denver and a lot of them are being torn down to make condos.”

Gentile’s photos are elegiac. As conformity threatens alternative queer cultures and wealthy white yuppies replace gritty urban centers with sterile, faux-lofts, she documents endangered architectural species of Denver with a deft sense of composition and an uncompromising devotion to excavating perfection.

Sadly, her work has gone unnoticed by an art world all too complicit in the destruction of our cities. Not rushing towards the commercial art world, Gentile continues to hone her craft, build her portfolio, and discover perfection in daily life.

Colorado Queer Youth Summit

Yesterday morning Jessi and I headed to the Colorado Queer Youth Summit where she did a counter-recruitment presentation and I talked to a small roomful of folks about 50 years of radical queer cinema, shifts in queer politics, debates about assimilation, class, race, and historical revisioning in less that 45 minutes! What a whirlwind.

The entire event was incredible. About 150 LGBTQ youth from all over the state got together at the University of Denver to strategize, plan, educate and learn!

So many inspirational people together, made this a summit I was proud to be a part of!

Queer Anti-Displacement Coalition

Regarding the city of San Francisco and many other spaces that are friendly for wealthy, white gay folks, gentrification continues to be a major issue. As I was walking up the street I came across a sign for the Queer Anti-Displacement Coalition that is doing work to stop the eradication of queer cultures that fall outside Gavin Newsome's marriage paradigm. I look forward to finding out more about their work!

Patriotism and the Prison of Dissent

On the same day that Barack Obama begins his nationalistic patriotism tour in Independence, Missouri, the authorities-that-be announced that protesters will be fenced in by chain-length
or chicken-wire during the Democratic National Convention. While the Democratic presidential candidate wags on about a love of country and the importance of sacrifice to the nation-state, the Federal Court approves the creation of "Free Speech Zones," or the sectioning off of areas where Freedom of Speech can be granted within a metal cage.

What Obama, the Federal Government, the City of Denver, Secret Service, and Homeland Security are forgetting is that to demonstrate a commitment to the best of "American" ideals, basic constitutional rights must be protected by any means necessary. Rather than addressing the ever-increasing totalitarianism of the United States Police State, Obama glibly blabs patriotic pap as police continue harassing communities of color, queer people, poor people, and people who dare criticize the corporate state this country has become.

The cage protesters will be confined in will be a visual reminder of the 2 million plus people incarcerated in the United States, the legacy of slavery that U.S. corporations continue to profit from, the Japanese Internment Camps, and the incarceration of queer people.

When Obama yaks about patriotism, it is imperative to remember what pro-Americanism supports--genocide masked by the right to life, slavery masked by the right to liberty, and the planned poverty, sickness, and misery of millions masked by the right to the pursuit of happiness.

American patriotism is the naturalization of racism and in claiming this project of white supremacy, Obama's claims of patriotism become a tool for white power.

Unions: Queer Them or Let Them Die

I just read on an anarchist newswire a reportback from the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference.

From the report-back:
Organizers from the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC), Workers Solidarity Alliance, Industrial Workers of the World, Solidarity & Defense, Capital Terminus Collective, Amanecer, Class Action Alliance, Michigan-Minnesota Group, Anti-Racist Action, the (now defunct) Love and Rage Anarchist Federation, and even a former member of the Mujeres Libres of the Spanish CNT attended. We discussed organizing experiences in the community, workplace, and various social movements with a focus on the role of race and gender within the movement.

This sounds like it was probably an incredible event with great organizations represented. Outside of Love and Rage, which the writer mentions is defunct, the other anarcho-communist organizations sound so caught up in the burdensome jargon of white, male labor organizing that I wonder where the possibility lies.

Don't get me wrong. I can get as teary-eyed as the next Wob when I hear a searing rendition of Solidarity Forever. Sab the cat makes me chuckle too. That being said, there is something unbearably tiresome, white, patriarchal, and heterocentric about the rhetoric of the labor movement. Perhaps this is why, according to The Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 12.1% of the U.S. workforce belongs to a union.

Of those 12%, dare I speculate most are reform minded and content with the Capitalist system? In that case, there are likely more LGBTQ people in the United States than there are revolutionary minded trade-unionists.

Perhaps the time for queering the union movement is now. Since queerish icons like Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna took over the popular imaginary in the 80s, the fact of the matter is If its not queer, its not here, so get over it.



So perhaps the time has come for Sab and Felix the cat to start doin'-it, for Solidarity Forever to be sung from the bubbling tubs of bathhouses, for queer organizers like Emma Goldman and Baynard Ruskin to be celebrated far and wide for the queerness, and for the trade union movement to stop acting so gosh-darned butch.

If trade-union anarchists want to play Joe Worker, they should save it for play parties. Oversized, white, straight male workers are anachronisms. The oppressed work force is radically diverse in gender, race, and documentation status. As the icons of immigrant labor have been swept under the rug for the domination of white men in the labor movement, Joe Worker's image must be swept away if Class Struggle is to mean anything more than a postmodern nod of the head to the late 19th early 20th century.

Queer Liberation

So many well-intentioned heterosexuals want the queer world to be filled with docile homosexuals, culturally sophisticated gays and socially conscious lesbians whose sexuality refuses to threaten the norm. These friendly straights want the LGBTQ community to sit happily in church, praise the hetero-Judaeo/Christian God, commit to one partner, and die while murdering brown people to protect the United States and Western Civilization stripped of queer desires and gender confusion. So many people want the queer world to be a white world filled with white Boy Scouts. They want to police our desire and make sure we conform to their expectations of how good homosexuals behave.

Many gay people take on this sexuality and gender policing in order to protect their affiliations with the heterosexual world. They get angry when people don't conform to "straight acting" clean gender performance standards.

All people who use identity, language, and law to police desire and expressions of gender and sexuality are involved in a neo-fascist movement designed to regulate sexuality and ensure that the body continues to be a tool of capitalism--a productive organ breeding workers for the system. All who mobilize so-called "Pride" to celebrate capitalism and justify the state's relationship to queer people are complicit in the destruction of liberated sexuality.

Queer liberation cannot exist alongside any government, religion, or identity formation that relies on policing behavior, desire, and the granting of so-called "rights." Queer liberation must occur simultaneously with all forms of social and ecological struggle against the state and the machines of industry. Queer liberation demands the abolition of standards of normalcy and refuses the tyranny of Average Joe/Jane and their white, middle-class gay and lesbian counterparts.

Nia King's Borderlands Project

Many of you are probably familiar with Nia King's zine Borderland: Tales From Disputed Territories Between Races and Cultures. Its available at The Queer Zine Archive Project. If not, not you should get familiar. And in the meantime, Nia has put out a call for submissions for Borderlands 2! The call is below:

I am currently seeking personal stories and visual art on the theme of FAMILY for the upcoming issue of my compilation zine about mixed-race, bicultural and transracial adoptee identities. Stories should be
non-fiction and no more than 800 words. No poetry please. Visual art should be black and white and replicate well in a copy machine (minimal grey tones). Submissions are not due until JUNE 1st, 2008, but please don't wait to start writing! Your stories are valuable, and it's time to bring our often neglected cross-cultural and multi-racial experiences from margin to center by telling our own stories!

Send submissions to oxette    (at)   riseup.net. -- Nia King

Bohemian Grove -- A Queer, Rich, Conservative Paradise

As an atheistic queer deemed 100% pagan by the Internet, I am often eager to hear about the creepy cult rituals of power-brokers in our society. Today, I watched a documentary about Bohemian Grove, a place where ruling class men get together for a couple weeks of Dionysian ritual every year. According to the documentary and a number of conspiracy theorists, Bohemian Grove is filled with homosexual debauchery, cross-dressing, gin-drinking, and paganism. The likes of Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Richard Nixon, and the Bush family have been associated with this gathering of Presidents, Oil Tycoons, Foundations, Government officials, and others. Bohemian Grove's icon is an owl--an animal I happen to identify VERY strongly with. What I'm horrified by is that the conspiracy theorists seem to think that paganism and homo-sex are what makes these ruling class turds terrible people. For real? Perhaps owl worship, anal sex, and excessive makeup are the only redeeming aspects of these filthy rich shit-bags who bomb, dump on, and enslave brown people while murdering mother earth and compromising all of our well-being. The most disturbing part of the Bohemian Grove phenomenon is that if the allegations are true, I fear the Right-Wing is having better orgies, pagan rites, and homosex than me! What the fuck! Time to turn this shit around!!!

House Passes Bullshit Version of ENDA

For those following the House attempt to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity, I have some BAD BAD NEWS! The House passed a modified version of the bill that failed to include employment discrimination based on gender identity. This is a huge loss for the queer community and transgendered people in particular. 350 LGBTQ organizations refused to endorse a bill that did not include gender-identity discrimination. To those lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered organizations that refused to split gender identity and sexual orientation, you kick ass. The Democratic House has once again failed the queer community and faked having a civil rights agenda while simultaneously splitting sexual orientation from gender identity. To the single-minded people at the Human Rights Campaign who read this as a victory, shame on you for continuing to ignore the plight of transgendered people. Your lack of opposition to the sexual orientation only version of EDNA aided its passing. This is a loss. Stop celebrating.

Couch Potato Revolution