GAYLETTER

Back in 2012, I saw Christeene perform at her very first gig in Brooklyn at Glasslands Gallery. It was a high-energy terrorist drag show with lots of mooning and stage diving. The crowd went wild. By that time, I was already familiar with her music, videos and filthy lyrics:

I am your new celebrity

I am your new America

I am the piece of filthy meat

That you take home and treat to yourself

— “African Mayonnaise” (2012)

But it’s Christeene’s live show that won me over and left a real impression. The audience interaction I found poignant and sincere; same with her no-bullshit approach to issues of gender politics, censorship and the policing of our queer community. It was raw, dirty, entertaining and enlightening, all at the same time. Enchanted, I decided I’d never again miss a chance to see her perform.

Christeene and I met socially a number of times, in typically late-night affairs, before or after her appearances. We’d even had our pictures taken together. But I knew very little about the person behind the act, an Austin-based native of Louisiana named Paul Soileau. So when an invitation arrived from the Museum of Human Achievement in Austin, I knew right away that I needed to go on a field trip with Christeene, to document and investigate.

When Paul and I met on my first night in Austin, it felt like déjà vu, like maybe we were separated at birth. …

“It’s crazy to think my first single came out only a year ago.” Kim Petras took a breath to consider the whirlwind. Six years ago she left Germany and headed to L.A., where, like countless others before her, she assumed her celebrity status awaited.

She wasn’t wrong. Within the last few months alone, she attended the MTV Video Music Awards for the first time, performed her very first stadium show (at Arthur Ashe Stadium) and took the stage at Billboard’s annual Hot 100 Festival. Now, her full-length debut is set to drop in 2019. This may all sound like the candied precursor to a glorious pop career, but despite the synthetic, sugary goodness of her music, arriving wasn’t a cakewalk. “What I have,” Kim said, “I worked for it.”

Following an absurdly busy August in New York, Kim returned to L.A. in time to celebrate her 27th birthday, at Disneyland no less. She spent the day with close friends and a bunch of gummy edibles, shutting off her phone for an adventure in the park. She needed to unwind before what might be an even busier autumn, including an upcoming tour with Troye Sivan. “It felt great to just be a person,” she told me, remembering the edibles. “I just needed a day to be stupid.”

She says all this without an ounce of irony — a key facet of her brand. As we chatted, she called herself “basic,” citing her abiding interests in Pumpkin Spice Lattes and ramen noodles. …

Creating an independent print publication in 2018 means lots of challenges, especially when it’s queer focussed. Producing stories for it, self-sustaining it, finishing it on time…it’s a trying, complicated process to turn ideas in your head into a high-quality finished magazine. Thankfully we have no lack of ideas (we have too many!) that we want to turn into stories.

This year we put out two printed issues, with 4 covers, photographed by Mickalene Thomas, Vivienne Maricevic, Luke Gilford and Ben Zank. It has brought us much satisfaction to print and share with you so many powerful photographs featuring LGBTQ people from around the world, captured by some of our favorite artists and creators. Each one contributes to the GAYLETTER legacy.

We decided at the year’s end that it might be nice to share some of our favorite images that we produced and commissioned from the past 12 months. It was tough narrowing it down to just 15. We love every image we print, but you can’t have a ‘best of’ without narrowing it down to a handful of the best.

So without further ado, here are our top 15 photographs from GAYLETTER Magazine from 2018. See you in 2019!

CHARLENE PHOTOGRAPHED AT HER HOME — THE INFAMOUS CASA DIVA IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, 2018.  PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOMMY KHA

MARKUS, SY, HECTOR AND JAN CARLOS PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK, 2018. PHOTOGRAPHY BY CODY CHANDLER

AMANDA LEPORE PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE GAYLETTER OFFICE IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK, 2018. …

When we were casting “The Clowns” to be photographed for GAYLETTER Issue 8, we looked for queens who’s makeup operated within the vein of what is visually understood as clown. Happy, sad, goofy, kitschy, macabre. Even if queens weren’t explicit in their clowning, their beats are paintings, and we read for gestures that pointed toward the ubiquitous performance style. Some of them knew they were clowning, and some didn’t think to much about it, but if we saw a clown, we called the queen.

Some of the clowns flew in for the shoot, some of them rolled over the bridge from Brooklyn. And some came straight from the gig. Before they touched up their hair and sharpened their frowns, we asked them to step into frame for testing. It’s not like we’d never seen a drag queen half-out of drag before, but the particular mixture of sweatpants and sneakers, or overalls, or knitwear represented what Tyler Akers, writing for Issue 8 calls the “complex, colorful relationship between queerness and clown culture.” He posits there has never been a better time to debate the conjoined politics surrounding the art forms considering the omnipresent the national conversations around LGBTQ+ issues, and the rise in popularity of queer phenomena like RuPaul’s Drag Race.

We wanted to hear from the queens who became clowns. What was their inspiration? Is clowning kind of important? “Since court jesters,” HinkyPunk said, “clowns have been a voice of truth veiled in humor or farce. …

Early on a Sunday morning last December, we met at our Lower East Side office. It was cold and overcast that day, hardly inviting weather for a shoot. But it was a shoot day nevertheless! With models Markus, Sy, and the twins Jan Carlos & Hector, we set off deeper into the Lower East Side with cappuccinos in hand and a few pastries and arrived on set to shoot with fashion photographer Cody Chandler.

Designed by Neil Patrick Grotzinger, Nihl applies ornate sensibilities to traditional menswear. Using Swarovski crystals, his Parsons’ MFA collection (Spring / Summer 2018) calls upon beaded singlets and leotards to deliver a glittering wrestling fantasy.

It was an intimate set, no stylist (except for us), no hair and makeup team (obviously the models didn’t need that because they arrived all natural) — it was perfection. the only thing that we forgot was The wine. As you can imagine, 75% of our shoots come with a toast because we are gay and as you know we love a celebration.

Check out the behind the scenes photos below, and to see the images that made it to print, buy GAYLETTER Issue 8. 

  …

Come join us this week, starting this Thursday, September 20 at 6:00PM (for the preview) as we head to the Printed Matter‘s Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 —  We’ll be at Booth N27. The book fair is one of our favorite events of the year (Click here to see photos from the last year). Not only is it a wonderful chance to meet our readers, but we also like to sneak off from our booth, when if we get the chance, to go roam around the floors of the fair to see all the amazing printed matter available from other publishers and galleries from around the world.

There is an overload of incredible stuff to look at. In its 13th year the fair features 365 exhibitors. It is also the first fair since the death of it’s curator Shannon Michael Caine. It won’t be the same fair without him…On Sunday at 3:30PM we’re going to be talking on a panel about BUTT magazine — It’s the US premiere of the film ‘After BUTT’ by Ian Giles (Here’s the Facebook page with more details). Come to the Art Book Fair to support print and help us keep our publication alive by buying one, or ALL available issues, nothing wrong with owning the entire collection!

Thursday (preview night) 6:00PM-9:00PM, Friday 1:00PM-7:00PM, Saturday 11:00AM-9:00PM, Sunday 11:00AM-7:00PM. MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave. Long Island City, NY. …

Pride month is here again, and while we celebrate our community year round, it’s wonderful to have a commercially recognized month. (Cause it certainly isn’t federally recognized!)

Originally designed by Gilbert Baker for San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day in 1978, the flag — which symbolizes peace, happiness, and among other things, pride — has certainly grown in popularity. For GAYLETTER Issue 7 we asked several working artists to recreate their own interpretation of the flag, in whichever medium they pleased. Kostis Fokas‘ photograph graced our cover.

“The most important values of the human existence. For me,” he said, “there’s no difference between women and men, races or sexual orientations. We are all equal, we have the same rights, and we should celebrate this. The rainbow flag is a celebration of life!” — Kostis Fokas

In collaboration with PAOM we decided to put this image on a handful of items most perfect for summer and celebrating Pride. This collection is most certainly what you should be wearing this June and beyond! To help make the shoot even more queer and proud, we casted exclusively with New Pandemics, the first ever casting management agency dedicated to increasing LGBTQ+ visibility.

Shop the collection now!

Dylan P. and Cory

Burhan and Dylan C.

Isaac

Shop the collection now! …

“Riding in your car on the road straight through to nowhere.” So sets the tone for Ssion’s latest single “At Least the Sky is Blue” off the forthcoming album O. The opening line is miserable at best; a cliché sung by teenagers, that has been metabolized into a cultural phenomenon of sorts — who hasn’t dreamt of driving away from it all with the windows open nowhere in front of you?

Cody Critcheloe — the artist behind Ssion — is a mastermind of this kind of banal beauty. He made his name as a singer, making music off his laptop, but has since re-focused on directing.  After his music career took off in late-2000s, Ssion’s been on musical-hiatus since 2012’s Bent. The name hasn’t completely gone away though. His film-treatments, which dabble mostly in surrealism, has found him working with the likes of indie-stars Perfume Genius and pop-icons like Kylie Minogue.

When we heard Ssion was coming back with an album it was easy to say ‘yes’ when Cody asked to collaborate on some pages for GAYLETTER Issue 8. In conversation with Bruce Labruce, Cody said that “At Least the Sky is Blue” is a very honest song, inspired by his time spent in L.A. doing ketamine, which he confessed is “such a fun drug.”

On a lyrical level, “At Least the Sky is Blue” indulges in that revery, but the music video has it’s own narrative breakdown. Just under six minutes of footage amount to a pulpy, tacky and totally far-out storyline that includes beefy bodies, an in-house green-juice bar, an 80s Mercedes-Benz, and a dream sequence staring Ariel Pink as a white-haired Elizabeth Taylor. …