03/10/2024
Chloe Sherman has a new book called Renegades: San Francisco in the 1990s which is profiled in the Guardian newspaper. Chloe, a photographer by trade, moved to the city in 1991. She says "This was a time when a queer community couldn’t be located easily online. To find people like you, you moved to cities like San Francisco. It’s easy to see, in retrospect, that this was a turning point for LGBTQ+ rights: it was long before marriage equality, but I think we were aware, even at the time, that we were part of a broad cultural shift. The world we lived in was a pretty radical counterculture: experimentation in terms of sexuality and gender was central to our lives, and we were not embraced by the outside world. In preparing these images for the new book, I’ve been really struck by the reaction of the new queer generation. There’s a hunger for seeing and understanding their queer history, and for a glimpse of the lives that came before them. I hope my work helps to archive and contribute to our collective history." The publisher of the new book is Hatje Cantz and the publisher's precis has this to say "In the 1990s, queer youth, outcasts and artists, flocked to San Francisco to find one another and to experiment with art, self-expression, style, and gender. Rent was affordable, paving the way for queer bars, clubs, tattoo shops, galleries, cafes, bookstores, and women-owned businesses to emerge. A new wave of feminism embraced gender bending, and butch/femme culture flourished. The Mission District was the center of this queer cultural renaissance, and the feeling of community was palpable. Chloe Sherman was both a member of this community and an ardent visual chronicler. Her documentary photographic work on 35mm film stems from a commitment to capturing the vibrancy, tenderness, individuality, resilience, and joy within this subculture that was derided by mainstream society. Distilling the spirit of the time, her debut monograph is a candid portrait of a vibrant era that connects current and future generations to the pulse of San Francisco at a pivotal chapter in queer history." If you are interested in getting hold of a copy of this book, why not purchase from one of the many LGBTQIA+ and progressive independent bookstores that you can find across the United Kingdom.
