The perfect photograph is a kind of miracle that appears in a blaze of light — subject, shapes and perfect mood; you press the button almost by chance and the miracle happens.” /5

Second round revisions away to @stanfordpress.bsky.social. An entire summer's worth of Sitzfleisch. /1

Supervisor pride is seeing your impressive former student Jane Freeland publish in Geschichte und Gesellschaft. doi.org/10.13109/geg...

With the excitement of a child (captured here by Brassaï) I turn to the last chapter edits of my manuscript! “I don’t have a philosophy, I have a camera.” – Saul Leiter

I couldn't imagine writing my book - a global history of the Sexual Revolution through photography - without the incredible work of other scholars. One example is Federica Cavazzuti's research on women's liberation photography in Japan. Just stunning. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Images move. But so do photographers, like Sergio Larrain. Chilean by birth, he fled home as a teen to the US to study forestry, then to Europe and the Middle East where he picked up the camera. Among his many subjects was postwar London in a 1958 photobook where he presaged the Swinging Sixties. /1

For anyone following the deleterious impact of Alberta's anti-LGBTQIA laws, this open access article gives crucial background to on-the-ground experience of the youths affected. Read open access here: lnkd.in/g_djzatz

Kinship is sharing space in the Prinz Eisenherz Catalogue with Andrea Rottmann and @tarekshuk.bsky.social 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Indeed, we are very much hoping the softcover is cheaper (!!), but it is still exciting to see our volume make its way into production. www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

Friends in Toronto, be sure to check out the new plaque commemorating the march following the notorious bathhouse raid in 1981. And a great lecture by Tom on the lessons from this history too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk2-...

Great fun fêting Matt Cook at Oxford last week on the publication of his new book with @bloomsburyhist.bsky.social. With left to right Jeffrey Weeks, Rebecca Jennings, Sarah Knott, Matt, of course, and Colin Johnson. Followed by a stunning symposium featuring student research. The future is bright!

Small article, big profile pic in the Neue Westfälische regional newspaper this morning. On how to counter the AfD.

Happy Pride from the Beinecke Library's lesbian pulp fiction collection, named after the inexpensive wood pulp paper on which they were printed. They could be found at magazine and newspaper stands, drugstores, and bus terminals. #Pride beinecke.library.yale.edu/article/lesb...

This was a nice memory that popped up on my feed: a year ago, I was @hefnu.bsky.social giving the Zev Weiss Annual Lecture, surrounded by some of my favourite people.

Very much looking forward to visiting Norway next week and hearing some papers on "mundane queer life" - life beyond the bright lights of the big city. Part of the University of Bergen's Queerdom project. www4.uib.no/en/research/...

Adorno, Bourdieu, Foucault, Habermas, Evans? Still makes me chuckle. Coming out in September 2026. With a book launch at the Schwules Museum November 5th. Save the date!

Mother's Day thread through the prism of photography. We all can claim we live multiple lives, but Edith Tudor-Hart might just take the cake. Born Edith Suschitzky in Vienna into a socialist Jewish family, she grew up surrounded by radical literature in her parents' bookshop. /1

Things I love about Berlin: that you can find a dance party at any time of the day on weekends, leaving enough time for last call at Südblock where you meet one of the doyennes of the city's lesbian feminist scene in time to wish her a happy 67th birthday.

Lots of debates again these last two days in the German media around the meaning of May 8th in the context of the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine and the growth of support for the AfD. /1

The F.C Gundlach retrospective at the Bucerius Kunst Forum is very much worth a visit. So many gems from the queer/fashion networks he built to his work with Lufthansa. Sophie-Charlotte Opitz and Sebastien Lux at the Gundlach Stiftung did a marvellous job. fcgundlach.de/blogs/was-is...

In honour of Louise Glück, whose birthday was yesterday. I love the way she drew on her own archive of loss, grief, and heartbreak in linking the particular to the universal. As one critic said, "She is at heart the poet of a fallen world.” Here is one of my favourites.

So glad for Gabrielle Higgins who successfully defended her dissertation prospectus at the Strassler Center @clarkuniversity.bsky.social

In the age of anti LGBTQIA backlash, history gives us hope. P.S. Burn this Letter Please is a documentary film about New York City's drag community. The government sought to destroy them, then history tried to erase them, now they tell their story for the first time. archive.ph/NFg9V

Hope.

Increasing numbers of the CDU and some old guard gay intelligentsia support the battle against Vielfalt, "queer" and "trans" most recently touched on by Kubicki in his article in Cicero. Kubicki - vying for FDP chairman - didn't mind being in this volume underwritten by NIUS. archive.ph/IfJ2j

Amazing exhibition on Ottawa’s drag scene, the product of a third year public history course @carleton.ca on photography. Super well done. You can see it now until December at Gallery 112. ottawa.ca/en/arts-heri....

On this International Romani Day, I think about Roma child survivor of Auschwitz and trans* Berlin cabaret performer Suleika Aldini. I wish we could say she thrived after the war. /1

Because I choose not to platform hate and the awful place we find ourselves in these dreadful days, I give you, instead, life, in the form of one kid’s fixation with our crazy, loveable dog.

Such an amazing queer kinship moment with my amazing former MA student's impromptu meet up with my extraordinary German translator at the lesbian feminist archive Spinnboden in Berlin! It doesn't get any better than this. The Queer Art of History indeed! xx

Challenging the Gender Binary in Photography. Transcript of a talk given by Hélène Samson as part of the McCord Discoveries series. Robert Ethelbert Cooper’s photographic album (number 3), 1923-1929. Gift of Marjorie D. Cooper Gawley, McCord Museum www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca/en/blog/tran...