Queer Moments at Lightwork Gallery in Syracuse, NY highlights the diversity of queer experience and the power of photography to affirm and sustain difference.

For nearly five decades, Light Work Gallery has amassed a photography collection donated by the artists who participated in the organization’s varied programs, including artist residencies and exhibitions. It’s a unique collecting model, one driven by the artist’s sense of their best work and not external factors or input such as art market viability or donor eccentricities. Moreover, the 4,000-piece collection sustains a counter narrative to other institutional photography collections that do not reflect the diverse identity markers of contemporary makers.

Curator Ryan Krueger elaborates on those themes in Queer Moments: Selections from the Light Work Collection. On view at the Syracuse, NY gallery through October 14th, the installation highlights 14 artists whose photographs convey quiet yet remarkable moments in queer history from the 1990s to now.

Krueger, who works at Light Work Gallery as the Digital Services Coordinator, wrote at length about the project in our email exchange, noting how the Light Work collection charts photography’s material and aesthetic evolution over 48 years and why the perennial quest for representation is so important..

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Ryan Krueger