Holding Space: Life and Love Through a Queer Lens

By Ryan Pfluger, Janicza Bravo and Brandon Kyle Goodman

Featuring 100 stunning color photographs of queer, interracial couples taken by a renowned photographer for the New York Times Magazine, Time, Rolling Stone, and more, this incredible photo and story collection depicts modern love and relationships in all their joy, vulnerability, and affection.
 
Throughout 2020 and 2021, during a time of intense personal and political upheaval, artist, advocate, and photographer Ryan Pfluger set out to capture intimate images of queer, interracial couples, along with personal insight into their relationships in today's world. Featured together for the first time in Holding Space, this unique collection of modern love in its many forms across the spectrum of race, sexuality, and gender identity and gives space to these couples to share short, revealing stories about their relationships.
 
The photos in this collection, and the people in them, can be startling in their openness, playful in their poses, and tender to their core. Pfluger has captured the magic, honesty, and beauty of love in today's queer culture.
 
With a Foreword by Janicza Bravo and an essay by Brandon Kyle Goodman

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781648961991

Ryan Pfluger

Ryan Pfluger is an artist and photographer based in Los Angeles, California, where they live with their dog, Sarah Connor. Born and raised in New York, they received an MFA in Photography at School of Visual Arts.

Book preview

Introduction

RYAN PFLUGER

I exist at the intersection of marginalization and privilege. I am queer—I am nonbinary—but I’m also white. Grappling with how to handle that as an artist—for my work to investigate a nuanced and complicated space—has been a long journey. I have always seen myself as a storyteller. Until now my stories have been told exclusively through photographs. I’ve managed to weave intricate narratives in a single frame. Yet, no matter who or what the subject was, the perspective was one-sided. Control was inevitably in my hands.

Part of the reason I became a photographer was to gain some semblance of control over a life that always seemed to ebb and flow based exclusively on the decisions of others. My father a drug addict, mother an alcoholic. I was outed by my mother at thirteen—an age when I didn’t even know what that meant for me. Control became an abstract concept that I was never privy to.

The driving force to be behind the lens, though, was my instinctual desire for people to feel seen, thoughtfully and lovingly. Being seen through the eyes of judgement, racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, and so on is indefinably damaging. Deep scars of trauma never fully leave us despite the healing work we do. But those scars fade into the deeper recesses of our mind the more work we do. The emotions become easier to manage. The walls fewer. It was the people who shared that space of healing in my life who were paramount to the hastening of that process. As creating photographs became less of a craft and more a part of my being, I discovered my gift to create art also held space for others—that relinquishing the control I had so desperately craved can be more powerful than possessing it. Photography became a vessel of healing.

The language we often use to describe photography can be violent and objectifying. The male gaze. The taking of someone’s portrait or having a photo shoot. The directing of subjects. We intellectualize and celebrate the photographer’s work and intentions, while maintaining assumptions and fetishizing those depicted in a singular frozen moment of time. There is rarely a subject statement; instead we get an artist’s statement. When I started this body of work, I knew it couldn’t exist under this framework. I needed a new set of parameters. The scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989—a framework for understanding the advantages and disadvantages one experiences based on race, gender, sexuality, class, etc. Yet, there appeared to be little if any exploration of this within the photographic medium.

The community I exist in—the queer community—is one that is defined by intersectionality. It is vast and encompasses nuanced identities. It has taught me how to look at the world. I knew exploring intersectionality through interracial queer couples would give the scope I needed to show that. At the same time, I understood my inherent privilege as a white person behind the lens. To test the waters, I began by photographing couples I knew or who were in my extended social circle. Couples would pick where they wanted to be photographed and decide what they would wear or how undressed they were comfortable being. No expectations and no release forms. The only requirement—touching. If they decided down the line they no longer wanted to be a part of what I was creating, the choice was always in their hands.

After those first sessions, seeing the photographs I made, I knew there was no turning back. I no longer needed to exist at the intersection I had been navigating for so long in my work. A new path emerged—the one I had been desperately searching for. To allow this body of work to grow organically, there couldn’t be curation on my part. I turned to social media, announcing I was looking for interracial couples to collaborate with me. There were no requirements or restrictions outside of that, and I would photograph anyone who reached out. I was connecting with strangers again, as I have done through the Internet for the better part of two decades, but now during a pandemic where connection felt intangible.

The more couples I photographed and stories I heard, the more I realized how many misconceptions still existed for me. Which was humbling to say the least. I would often look at emails from couples in bed at night, much to my partner’s dismay. One night he said, I thought you were only photographing queer couples, and my immediate response was that’s why I’m doing this. It was a hetero-passing couple that had caught his eye. I didn’t want assumptions or perceptions or stereotypes to exist in what I was creating. This work needed the couples’ voices. So, I asked for just that, with general prompts, but everyone had the freedom to share what they wished.

Two cross-country trips, over a thousand rolls of film, and sixteen months later, I had photographed over a hundred and twenty couples. Some couples broke up and chose to not be a part of this project anymore. Others still wanted to be involved to share their stories of transition and loss. Couples dropped communication before and after I photographed them. Others became good friends and vocal supporters of what I’m doing. That is the beauty of relinquishing control. Allowing the space for things to evolve and change—for marginalized people to have control over their narratives regardless of my intentions. To listen and learn. That is why Holding Space exists.

Brandon (They/He) & Matthew (He/Him)

LOS ANGELES, CA

BRANDON

I think one of the most concerning things is hearing a white person say, I don’t see race. Even more concerning is if that white person is in an interracial relationship. It tells me that the Black/POC person in that relationship isn’t being seen in the totality of their identity. I’m a Black, gay, non- binary person, and I am all those things at the exact same time. If I had a white queer spouse who thought they understood my experience just because they’re also queer, I’d be in some real trouble.

The reason my husband Matthew and I continue to have a blossoming relationship is not just because of the compatibility of our interests and communication styles, but because he actively does the work to understand his privileges and dismantle them or use them to serve others. Are there hiccups? Of course. But he takes responsibility, apologizes, learns (or unlearns), and commits to doing better the next time around. Seeing him so invested gives me hope in other white folx being able to be partners (not allies) in the fight for equality and equity of Black lives.

I truly say, fuck allyship. An ally can dip in and leave when it gets hard. Can check out when it’s no longer convenient. My Black queer life doesn’t afford me the luxury to have allies. And I certainly can’t be married to one. A partner knows whatever happens to the other person, happens to you. That’s true romantically, but that’s the same energy needed in our friendships, families, professional relationships, even with strangers at the grocery store. Be a partner who says, I won’t tolerate racism or bigotry of any kind.

I love knowing I have a husband who is my partner in this fight for Black lives. Who, whether I’m present or not, remains conscious of his privilege and uses it to be a partner to anyone he’s around in any space he occupies. I also know that he is not the norm, and so I feel incredibly lucky to know him, to love him, and to be loved by him so deeply. Our partnership and his heart continues to expand my existence.

MATTHEW

I truly cannot put into words the impact that my relationship with Brandon has had on my life. Being queer, I did not grow up seeing or believing in the kind of intimate, supportive, and committed love that we are building together. I didn’t think it was possible for me, but I knew I had to try. Not only has our relationship totally expanded my vision for what’s possible in love, it’s also allowed me the space and safety to come to terms with my own identity and learn how to love myself more fully.

Being in an interracial queer partnership is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done and it’s also the most transformative. While I had already done a lot of work to unlearn and unpack my own racism before meeting Brandon, I hadn’t come close to the depths of work that I would be doing once we were together. A pivotal piece in that is seeing firsthand how Brandon shows up in the world and how the world often does not show up in return.

In living together, I have had the privilege to see the raw impact living in a racist, homophobic, and heterosexist world has on my partner. As a white partner I often have two choices: ignore it and see it as something done by white people at large and/or institutions and systems. Or acknowledge that I have a part in it as well. This has been and continues to be a challenge. I was groomed by a white supremacist society to believe that my needs and my comfort always come first. They do not. I am constantly challenged to admit that my and my partner’s lived experiences are vastly different, and the only way I can ensure that Brandon remains safe in this world is to do everything possible to not perpetuate racism and white privilege at home. I have learned so, so, so much about microaggressions and privilege because of Brandon’s patience and willingness to support me in that growth. I also own it; it is my work and no one else’s.

Once I figured out that racism is not Brandon’s fight that I need to support but a fight that I need to get into myself, a lot of my antiracism work started to shift. White partners of POC need to realize this is just as much for us and on us as it is for our partners. As much as racism has been internalized, we need the commitment to internalize anti-racism.

Christine (She/Her) & Hanna (She/Her)

SANTA FE, NM

CHRISTINE

We were always opposites in many ways. But from the perspective of loving life, we were best friends and soulmates. Our first date was five hours of conversation; our second, visiting the MoMA in New York and talking about sex dreams so loudly that security kicked us out; our third, wandering Rockaway Beach until the sun set and kissing in the dark. She was always the person I wanted to travel the world with, finding outrageous clubs and getting lost in coffee shops. I never felt more in the world, or of the world, than when I was with her.

It’s maybe ironic then that it felt like the outer world pulled us apart. Or maybe it was the unkind part of the outer world that I had internalized and couldn’t kick. As years passed and we grew closer and closer in friendship and love, moving across the country together and creating a home, everything also got harder. It seemed like the further we got into the relationship, the more people treated us differently, deferring to my whiteness in ways I didn’t always see or prevent. At work, people asked if I owned the house. In social groups, they made eye contact with me alone. Roommates asked me, not her, about the rent. We could talk about it at home, we could fight or cry or laugh about it in private, but inevitably the next time we were in the world, it happened all over again and the wounds would rip back open. Eventually, it split us apart.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if we could have made it work had we lived in a different world. Navigating race and gender within our workplaces, friend groups, families, and within ourselves often felt like too much. But on the other hand, maybe it was always about my relationship to the silence whiteness taught me. Being able to stand up for your person consistently and proudly is an essential part of every loving relationship, and no one should have to wait for their partner to find their voice in that arena.

But the thing is, she and I remain family. I love her more than any human on the planet, and I am committed to fighting for her and her friendship for the rest of my life and using my voice when racism surfaces. Now that we are no longer in a romantic partnership, we talk about race, gender, love, life, and every other thing under the sun with more freedom than ever. She’s still the one I want to get lost with in Berlin clubs and Paris coffee shops. I don’t know the moral of all this. But I know that I am