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
Review : Roger Walker-Dack
Editor in Chief : Queerguru
Member of G.A.L.E.C.A. (Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association) and NLGJA The Association of LGBT
Journalists. and The Online Film Critics Society. Ex Contributung Editor The Gay Uk &Contributor Edge Media
Former CEO and Menswear Designer of Roger Dack Ltd in the UK
one of the hardest-working journalists in the business' Michael Goff of Towleroad
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Labels: 2023, activist, documentary, Fiona Clark Unafraid, icon, New Zealand, photographer
