In May 1988, Section 28, an edict prohibiting local authorities from “promot[ing] homosexuality,” was passed by the British government. That same year, Del LaGrace Volcano brought four friends to London’s Hampstead Heath—a well-known cruising ground—for a photoshoot.
Volcano, the author of some of the queer canon’s most iconic images, had fallen in with the Chain Reaction crowd—the collective behind the world’s first Lesbian BDSM club. “It was a safe space for role-playing, leather dykes, motorcycle dykes, misfits, and trans women,” they remember over Zoom. “There was a sort of gang feeling.”
At the Heath, Volcano invited their co-conspirators—Jayne, Zed, Kim, and Serena—to pose, playfully appropriating the promiscuity better associated with gay male culture. The resulting series is an ode to the persistence of pleasure and power of kinship. Thirty-seven years later, the images are being given a new life with Queer Dyke Cruising, published by cult bookstore and press Climax. To mark the occasion, Volcano shares a few snapshots from their romp in the park.
“[This series] was inspired by gay male sex culture. So you’ve got [these] big butch dykes ‘cruising’ in [Hampstead Heath], gay men’s territory, performing these scenarios in a kind of staged way. This group here—they were mixing it up. They were going to a lot of sex parties together, so it was real. It wasn’t like they didn’t know each other. But I [always] create a space where people can express themselves. I don’t give them a script—it’s more like, ‘Play yourself’ …
I’ve always been interested in photographing what is unpredictable or random. When it comes together, it’s just magic. I’m interested in multiplicity, unpredictability, and precarity. A little danger, a little risk. But I want people to understand that I’m not making this work just for my family photo album. I’m making it for our album—for us. Photography is not just a job for me; it’s a calling.” —Del LaGrace Volcano
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