Queerguru reviews FIONA CLARK : UNAFRAID an affectionate profile of an unlikely queer icon @Wicked Queer

Fiona Clark Unafarid is an affectional profile of a rather eccentric photographer who is something of a queer icon in her native Aotearoa’s (New Zealand) that the rest of the world …….. particularly the LGBTQ+ one … should know about.

Back in the 1970’s  Clark captured images of the fringes of the local queer community: drag queens, transgender, and outrageous activists.  It was all too much for a conservative environment and it almost stopped her career before it could take off.  It was, she said, bad enough that photography has never been recognized as an art form,  but what was even worse was back then Auckland Council closed down a Gallery due to her ‘offensive” work.

Filmmaker Lula Cucchiara, a queer Latinx artist, had her cameras just aimlessly follow Clark,  now in her 60s and living on a deserted old dairy farm stacked high with ‘junk’ in the remote countryside.  She is every inch defiant about living her true life and unafraid of anyone/anything. 

Snippets of Clark taking to the camera often surprises you …. like the fact she had two lesbian lovers in the past …..one a weightlifter and the other a wrestler. Interestingly enough Cucchiara’s cameras picked up an abundance of  fascinating footage of Clark that she shot in 8 days, but then took two years to edit 

What is very satisfying is knowing that her early  work photographing  drag queens and transvestites which was vilified back in the 1970s/1980s is now celebrated and proudly shown in some of the very best galleries