Coinciding with Phyllis Christopher’s exhibition Contacts at BALTIC, and the publication of her book Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2003; Ariel Goldberg, Languid Hands and Sam Dolbear contribute to a digital noticeboard reflecting on their own encounters with queer photographic archives.

Phyllis Christopher prints her photographs in home and community darkrooms, using various techniques to create unique analogue prints. Many of the works included in Contacts were hand printed for the exhibition and each image in her book Dark Room is reproduced from a print rather than a photographic negative. The way that Christopher’s photographs are made by hand resonates with the kinds of queer intimacy and do-it-yourself cultures that they show as well as how the images continue to circulate and are cared for. The digital noticeboard responds to Christopher’s photography and to issues of desire, consent, and labour that encircle queer photographic archives.

The work will be launched online on 15 January 2022, See the BALTIC website for more details. The Contacts exhibition is on until 20 March 2022.