Gay coffee table books

Alongside I’m Going to Miss You, here are nine other coffee table books which document and celebrate the queer experience, each created by queer people or featuring them. Skip the candles, baked goods, and socks (though, everyone loves the latter) and go all in on a beautiful coffee table book full of queer art or history.

The books below touch on all corners of the creative world, from drag to interior design, proving queer people have been impacting art scenes for generations. Check out our gay coffee table books selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our book sets & collections shops. These photos, paired with descriptions of major events from each decade as well as selected reporting from The Times, showcase the victories, setbacks, and ongoing struggles for the LGBTQ community.

Short discount. Hardcover book. Published by Microcosm!.

To honor Pride Day, I have collected 11 queer photography books that celebrate the lives and loves of LGBTQ+ people. The Los Angeles Review of Books called this “probably the best coffee-table book ever created.” The curators of the Instagram account @lgbt_history created this photo book in Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder — a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.

Several notable queer photography books were published in , showcasing diverse perspectives and experiences within the queer micro-society. I also recommend exploring our reviews on fabulous books , films , and music. Edited by Jonathan D. Katz, Monacelli Press should be in every queer library. Katz deftly weaves together historical context and artistic practice, revealing how gender and sexual identity have been interrogated, celebrated, and reimagined in visual culture.

With contributions from artists and scholars, About Face creates a dynamic conversation around queer aesthetics, identity, and resistance. Whenever I encounter the intersection of art and activism, I am irresistibly drawn to it, compelled to engage with it on a deeper level. We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law by Yxta Maya Murray Cornell University Press explores the intersection of art, activism, and legal reform, focusing on women of colour and queer artists of colour whose practices fuse creative expression with direct political action.

Defined by protest, rebellion, and resistance to systemic abuse, artivism seeks to challenge and transform not only societal norms but also the structures of law itself. Combining oral histories with sharp analyses, Murray reveals the potent political and aesthetic meanings embedded in their practices. Murray demonstrates how these artists use their work to represent the lived tragedies of marginalised communities, articulating legally suppressed emotions and demanding accountability.

Yet, she leaves an essential question unanswered: how can artivism meaningfully enter and operate within the formal structures of American courts? This omission underscores the complexities of bridging artistic expression and legal reform, leaving readers to ponder the practical pathways of such integration. Despite this gap, We Make Each Other Beautiful is a singular achievement, offering a unique lens on the transformative potential of artivism.

Photography — A Queer History edited by Flora Dunster and Theo Gordon Ilex Press explores the crucial role of photography in shaping queer identities and how queer culture has influenced the art form across ten diverse themes, from documentary to performance, landscape to abstraction, and visibility to militancy.

Featuring over photographers and extended profiles on 79 key artists, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Joan E. Biren, Ajamu, and Zanele Muholi, it offers a broad, intergenerational, and transnational history of queer photographic practices.

gay photography books

Other practitioners, like Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Honey Lee Cottrell, have influenced lesbian and gay communities but remain underappreciated in mainstream art circles, offering a more expansive view of queer photographic history. This work provides a much-needed contribution to the field, emphasizing the diverse and evolving nature of queer art. This is no mere catalogue of images; it is a study in shadows—lengthened, deepened, and rich with untold stories.

What emerges is a tapestry of lives lived on the margins, not only through portraits of recognised queer figures but also via coded gestures, clandestine glances, and meticulously composed tableaux. These photographs, often created in times of repression, quietly resisted conformity, their subjects expressing alternative desires and forming covert communities.

Instead, it explores photography as a tool of queer self-expression, community formation, and subtle defiance. Deeply Human: Global Queer Photography Verlag Kettler promises to continue the critical examination of contemporary queer photography. While details remain scarce, the book appears poised to build on the rich thematic ground established by earlier explorations of the medium.

With a lineage that traces from Robert Mapplethorpe to Deborah Bright, it positions itself as an essential guide to the evolving canon of queer photography. How have artists developed a distinctly queer aesthetic? And how has the production and circulation of images fed both the queer desire for representation and the formation of transnational solidarities?

Spanning historical and national contexts, the book assembles the work of 84 artists, weaving together canonical images with fresh perspectives from emerging photographers. The result is a dialogue across generations, revealing the diversity and complexity of queer lives and aesthetics. When James Baldwin died in at the age of sixty-three, he left behind a body of work as multifaceted as the man himself.

Novels, essays, poems, and film scripts stand as testaments to an artist whose literary achievements were inseparable from his activism.