Rainbow Revolution

By Magnus Hastings

Rainbow Revolution is a collection of vibrant portraits that celebrate the expanding spectrum of queer identity and visibility.

Starting with an empty white box, renowned photographer Magnus Hastings invites members of the LGBTQIA+ community to creatively envision the space.

Funny, political, personal, racy, magical, and matter-of-fact—each individual presents themselves as they would like to be seen.

• Features more than 300 photographs
• Includes a number of short, moving statements by some of the subjects about who they are, and what that means
• A beautifully diverse celebration of queer identity and community

Proud, playful, defiant, and diverse, the empowering images and individuals in this beautiful volume represent the strength of knowing and expressing who we are.

Rainbow Revolution includes Kathy Griffin, Jade Thirlwall, Luke Evans, Boy George, Peppermint, Adore Delano, Eureka O'Hara, Alaska Thunderf*ck, Gigi Gorgeous, Nico Tortorella, and many more.

• A gorgeous book for the LGBTQIA+ audience and their friends, loved ones, and community around them
• Ideal for display on the coffee table
• Great for fans of Magnus Hastings' photography, Rupaul's Drag Race, and more
• Add it to the shelf with books like Queer: A Graphic History by Dr. Meg-John Barker, A Quick Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni, and We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Nov 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781797208183

Magnus Hastings

Magnus Hastings is a British photographer based in Los Angeles and London whose work has been published in GQ, Glamour, US Weekly, Attitude, Cosmopolitan, Total Film, and many others. The author of Why Drag?, his photographs have also been featured in many other books and in several solo exhibitions.

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

IN JANUARY 2018, RIDING HIGH ON THE SUCCESS OF MY FIRST BOOK WHY DRAG?, I WAS ALREADY EXCITED ABOUT MY NEXT PROJECT.

I knew I wanted to do more with drag, but I was also keen to embrace the entire queer spectrum. Attitudes to gender and sexual identity were changing rapidly, both in the queer community and beyond—but things were complicated. On one hand, acceptance and visibility were clearly on the rise; on the other, the world was becoming a very dangerous place for minorities. Governments in all corners of the globe were increasingly conservative and many of our hard-won rights were being eroded. I wanted to create a project that was highly visible and unapologetically queer, and one that shouted with pride, defiance, humor, and joy because, after all, if we are good at anything it is laughing in the face of adversity.

Because I wanted to make as much noise as possible, social media was going to be key. I thought about what the best visual structure might be for those platforms, the perfect frame for a super-instagrammable image that would work in large format too. Of course, it was the square. Which led me to a box, a white box, a 3-D blank canvas within which people could express themselves in any way they wished.

Everyone would have their moment.

Within three days, I had built a box in my parking garage and enlisted Alaska Thunderfuck and The Kiss Boyz to be my test subjects. Alaska nailed up some blue fabric, threw some shapes, and I knew straight away—yup, that’s gonna work. There was something egalitarian about the white box that I really liked. It presented each participant with exactly the same starting point and provided a context for their self-expression that was completely open with limitless possibilities. I also discovered that the box had a kind of magical quality: The white canvas subtly picks up the colors of the people and objects placed within it, appearing to absorb and reflect their essence.

Alaska Thunderfuck: Artist

We would produce mini theatrical pieces that were as much about the experience itself as the final image, with intentionally lo-fi special effects where you see the staples and the string and the fun. This was a no re-touch project—the photographs should be full of the raw energy generated by things happening in real time. I encouraged people to write on the walls, pin things up, and transform their space however they chose. If anyone needed a guiding hand, I was there to work with them—and I might make the odd cheat like duplicating an image of a person in their box—but ultimately this was their time to shine, to speak, and to be heard.

For the next three months, I worked under the radar, shooting around 130 people, all sworn to secrecy and not allowed to see their finished image until the great online unveiling on May 4th, 2018, at 12 p.m. At that moment, every image dropped and, as if from nowhere, #GAYFACE was born. As planned, we went viral immediately, with the hashtag trending on Twitter to the extent that a movie studio publicist told me that they routinely spent $100,000s on campaigns that were unable to achieve this kind of attention.

That same evening I had a sell-out pop-up gallery exhibit showcasing all the images, which I had printed onto canvas boxes—a box on a box. While they work fantastically well as solo pieces, I had always intended the photographs be shown in groups in order to express our solidarity, diversity, and power in numbers. Also, when they’re hung together, things happen. Not only does the space change from image to image, but hanging them in groups creates relationships between the photographs, sets up new dynamics, and alters the ways in which we see and feel seen.

The project continued for another two years as I traveled between LA, San Francisco, New York, and London, shooting more and more people, building boxes in each city, developing new ideas, and bringing them to fruition. It was wonderful, arduous, and expensive. I had meltdowns and breakdowns and was forced to take three months off for exhaustion. Who knew a simple white box could be so stressful?

Always destined to be subject matter for my next major publication, the #GAYFACE photographs provided me with an incredible resource—a rounded, representative group of images of the queer community in its myriad incarnations. Having shot close to 1000 boxes, I was ready to start on my second book: Rainbow Revolution.

The change in title was about inclusivity. I loved #GAYFACE as a title, but people were not always clear that it encompassed the entire LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Above all, Rainbow Revolution is full of the fight and fuck-you spirit that was the genesis of the project.

Compiling the book really made me want to ask my subjects some questions about their lives. As ever more gender and sexual identities were being named, it felt important to give people a voice and a platform from which to tell their stories and provide real insights into their experiences. These essays have definitely elevated the book for me and given it a purpose beyond the social media recognition the images have gained.

Of all the extraordinary people I have been lucky enough to photograph in one of my boxes, I think Ruby, the child of Jonathan Bloom and Eric Pliner, has impacted me most. When they arrived for the shoot, I was introduced to a sweet, shy kid called Jacob who I had to coax into doing a headstand. Jacob’s dads then informed me that he would like to become Ruby, so Jacob left the box, changed into his red dress, and came back. All timidity vanished, Ruby was ready to rock. Dismissing the rest of the family from the box, Ruby loved every minute of their time in front of the camera and I was deeply