GAYLETTER

When you’re seeing two of the most iconic performers in contemporary drag, what’s more exciting than being in the front row? For me, it’s getting to be backstage with my camera. That’s where the show behind the show takes place.

After many years of taking portraits of queer performers, icons, nightlife personalities and artist colleagues, I had never photographed Violet Chachki or Gottmik until their Halloween show in West Hollywood. The vibe backstage was ideal for capturing a different side of these fierce fashion queens — away from the public I was able to capture a tender, more nuanced side of the queens — without sacrificing the impressive level of drag and performance. And with these two, there’s always plenty of wit, tea, banter and reading.

For many queers, Halloween is our favorite holiday, it’s when we get to dress up and live out some fantasy that doesn’t fit into the everyday. For Violet and Gottmik, it’s Halloween all year long, something I take pleasure in watching on stage, backstage, on screen, and through the camera lens.

Up next, catch Violet Chachki and Gottmik in a limited run of their show “Christmas Misfits: A Drag Holiday Extravaganza” in a few cities in the USA.

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She is the pop star we’ve been waiting for. The Alaska-born 31-year-old has been making music since coming to New York and dropping out of fashion school, releasing her first LP, The Lake, in 2017. Somehow channeling Stevie Nicks, Britney Spears, and Skinny Puppy all at the same time, Macy live is something special. To talk about her latest project, Unbelievable Animals!, (also chakras and star fucking) she sat down to chat with phenom and friend Charlene Incarnate.

So Macy, everyone’s excited about Unbelievable Animals! It’s all anyone can talk about! [Laughs] Oh yeah all my fans!

If I had my own tagline for your album, it would be “a meditation on desire.” I love that!

That’s my tagline for your album because it is an expression of desire so thick that it almost sent you, Macy, into an ethereal state. Like it engaged all your chakras. [Emphatically] Yeah!

Were you having spiritual experiences that inspired the sound? I was! I mean I’ve talked a lot about the 20-songs-in-30-days process, but that felt very meditative, monk-like. Were you not smoking or drinking? No, I was doing both a lot! More of a New York transsexual monk vibe. But I wasn’t talking to anybody. I was locked up doing nothing but the album, and the experiences that led up to it were very dramatic lows that shook me in a way that didn’t make sense. So when I was over them, it was such a breath of fresh air. …