Artist Talk: Åsa Johannesson In Conversation with Laurie Bassam

Join artist Åsa Johannesson as she discusses her exhibition The Queering of Photography and explores how LGBTQ+ identities have been represented throughout the history of photography.

Over the past 20 years, Åsa has developed a distinctive approach to photography that blends documentary storytelling with staged and visually striking images. Her work looks at how photography can express queer experiences in new and creative ways. In this talk, she will share insights from her own practice and highlight influential photographers and moments from queer activism.

Åsa will be in conversation with Laurie Bassam, a curator and creative producer based in Brighton. Laurie is currently the Heritage Collections Curator for Towner Seven Sisters, a new gallery and arts centre in the South Downs National Park. Previously, they worked at Brighton & Hove Museums and at V&A Dundee, contributing to exhibitions on topics such as protest movements, nightlife, video games and plastics. They also co-founded an LGBTQ+ working group and helped develop the Lavender Labels project, which brings queer stories into the Scottish Design Gallery.

About Åsa Johannesson

Åsa Johannesson is an artist working across photography and writing. She studied at the Royal College of Art and her doctoral thesis examined possibilities of nonbinary logic in the theorisation of the photographic image. Åsa has exhibited her photographic work internationally, including at Centrum för fotografi (Stockholm), Queer Britain (London), Landskrona Foto (Landskrona), and FutureLab (Shanghai). Her most recent book, the research monograph Queer Methodology for Photography presents new approaches to making, writing and thinking about queer photography. Åsa’s prose poetry collection And I wanted to see it: my queerness in the best light is forthcoming. Åsa is based in London, UK and her hometown Växjö, Sweden.
Event image: Åsa Johannesson, Turn #7, 2021

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Host or Publisher Stills Centre for Photography