Emily Rose England on Subverting the Male Gaze and the Aesthetics of Queerness
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Emily Rose England’s photography could best be described as a visual love letter to the East London LGBTQI+ community. Their body of work allows for those informal, often authentic moments to play out before the lens in a way mainstream photographers could never mimic. These spaces that provide a setting for Emily’s work are under constant threat by far-right groups, acting as an unfortunate catalyst. One that reminds them of the significance of their practice, photographic proof that these communities exist beyond pride month.
Alongside their ongoing archive, Emily also captures members of their community through beautiful editorials that reflect their subject’s own style, always considering how they would want to be photographed.
Through this interview, Emily talks candidly about subverting the male gaze through their photographs, the exploitation of queerness as an aesthetic and how they reject this idea of originality in this deeply capitalistic world. The accompanying editorial is an exclusive self portrait for the Polyester Dollhouse.
LGBTQI+ people have constantly been erased from history. I feel like your work fights against that. What has motivated you to capture the life and vibrancy of East London’s LGBTQI+ community in your work?
So in all honesty to begin with it wasn’t an intentional decision to go out and document the East London LGBTQI+ community. I just started documenting my friends when we were getting ready and going out, then started photographing my friends various nights and over time it started to become this internal view into the community and I started realising the importance and significance of what I’m doing. Especially within recent years I’ve realised the importance of keeping a photographic archive of our community.
Over the past couple of years we’ve seen a rise in far right groups and ideologies that threaten our very existence and who would love nothing more than to erase our existence and to not acknowledge our existence. It’s worth emphasizing that whilst these groups and ideologies threaten all of us within the community, they are particularly aimed at trans people and their rights. We’ve seen the government drop plans for gender self identification, we see our friends wait for over four years for treatment on the NHS only for them to be bumped to the back of the queue for missing one appointment, we see no legal recognition for our non binary siblings and we see the hate and violence that comes from TERF groups... and we see the pain and suffering this causes our trans siblings - they are literally killing our trans siblings.
But at the same time this community fights back. It supports each other. It thrives. And I hope by continuing to capture and document our loving, beautiful and supportive community I can help fight too. I can show a community of different genders and sexualities supporting each other and co-existing and how beautiful that is and how that’s something to be cherished and upholded. It is important to show and celebrate that our identities do exist and are completely valid. It’s important to show that by just existing, we are already in an active rebellion against hetereonormative society and that we won’t be ignored or silenced.
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Eroticism and sexuality are also themes you explore in your photography. What has drawn you to the more sensual aspects of life?
I think my own personal experience has drawn me in - I play with eroticism and sensuality within my own image and how I hold myself but at the same time I’m not actually that sexual a person. I’m pretty happy on my own and prefer friendships over romance/sex, but I’m still massively influenced by it and people often think that I MUST be into it because of how I dress. It’s almost like subverting the male gaze - instead of seeing subjects depicted in an erotic or sexual or sensual manner as purely sex objects it’s more. I think it’s almost a power play over that - the people who pose for me are my friends and
To be honest this is something that’s kind of hard to put into words so please excuse me if it’s not as in depth or doesn’t make as much sense as my other answers.
“This obsession capitalism has with the idea of originality which actually does not exist only pits us against each other when in reality we should be supporting each other - and having us not supporting each other is exactly what they want.”
It’s something I’ve always been drawn to but almost seemed at odds with a little bit. Like I’m not really that much of a sexual person (because yes, people with low sex drives exist and it’s super super normal and the idea that we should look down on those who do have a low sex drive and shame them for it is like a product and tool used by patriarchal society) and a lot of what we traditionally see as erotic or sensual as been framed as a sexual object or thing to be consumed by men. As I got older I played with this in my own image, how I dressed, and I think a lot of people expected me to be this sexual object which I wasn’t. Because how you dress and hold yourself doesn’t give an invitation for just sex, there can be many reasons why you dress or are the way you are without it being purely sexcentric.
For me there’s a sense of power and confidence that comes with it which isn’t necessarily linked to the act of sex or the idea that I myself will be an object of sex. So I guess when it came to my art it was almost like reclaiming that male gaze and exploring eroticism, sensuality and the body without it being a vehicle for the concluding product of sex. The people I photograph are my friends and it usually fits in with their style - and for some of them sex is a part of their lives but at the same time it doesn’t define them or mean they’re purely a sexual object to be consumed. In my work, where the male gaze is removed, I hope it’s more read as an expression rather than a definition.
What's your most favourite project to have worked on? And please, describe in detail! We want to hear all about it.
It’s kinda of hard for me to pick our a particular project because most of mine are on going, long term things or are smaller shoots that make up a bigger thing (eg the posters I do for Sassitude). I mean obviously my ongoing archive is a favourite of mine, as it’s something I’ve put a lot of time and money into that I haven’t necessarily had repaid but it’s important. I love capturing my friends and community, it’s something that’s both very personal to me and to a lot of people but also means a lot and hopefully will have an impact on society for the better.
I do really love doing my shoots for Sassitude though, which is my on going queer femme night at Dalston Superstore - there’s actually one coming up on the 22nd of July! I shoot members of our community who frequent the club in a more editorial style often making the sets myself, but always keeping in mind their own personal style and how they want to be portrayed and represented.
I’ve done so many different ones, I guess my favourites include a series of shoots I did for my anti valentines party which explored the concept of queer love not just between romantic relationships but friendships too, a series of my friends as different Greek Godesses and the stars and moon shoot I did with Harriet Scott (@lady_beat_rice on insta) who’s one of my closest friends and muses. With the poster shoots I feel like I get to explore my creativity a lot more and the ideas I have in my head rather than just documenting and I love going through that process with my friends and working with them on it. I also shoot polaroids at every Sassitude too so I love the combination of the posters and polaroids at the end of each one.
In Oli Mould’s book Against Creativity, he suggests that we are all under constant pressure to be more creative and original. These demands are inescapable in our capitalist society. Is this a pressure you feel as a creative? And if so, how do you fight against (your) creativity being subsumed by capitalism?
In all honesty, for me personally I try to be more focused on being original to myself and what I’m doing rather than what a capitalistic society demands from me and others like me. I think there is a lot of pressure to be this super creative super original highly marketable product to be consumed by society and that’s the only way to be successful when in reality it’s not, especially with what I’m doing. There is a tendency from corporations and companies to exploit queerness in order to promote themselves and their capital gains without actually supporting the community and the artists that work within that. I made the decision quite early on to instead of focusing on being creative and original as a product to be consumed by society as a whole, to instead be focusing on being true to myself with what we create and how we explore our own creativity.
With that though I’ve not always gotten the opportunities or financial support I need and have had to work several jobs on top of what I’m doing to fund it, which has often come at the expense of my own mental health and financial stability, so it is incredibly tricky to balance and I totally get the appeal of submitting to the pressure and just doing it - cus it ain’t easy! But at the same time I see a lot of artists not getting the money they deserve whilst corps profit off them and their labour, often even expecting to use their art and labour for free for “exposure” which we all know does not really amount to anything, when they could easily pay the right amount AND also offer money towards the community.
A lot of these companies even have the audacity to exploit queer artists whilsts funnelling money into anti-LGBTQI causes! So in reality even when you do play in, you don’t get the opportunities you need and it only really works for a rare few. So it’s incredibly tricky to navigate capitalism and making sure you have enough money for the work you’re doing whilst trying not to be consumed by it.
Which leads me to my next point - is anything even original anymore in terms of being the first person to do it?
With documenting the queer community - I’m not the first person to do it, I won’t be the last and I’m not the only person doing it now - nor do I want to be. This obsession capitalism has with the idea of originality which actually does not exist only pits us against each other when in reality we should be supporting each other - and having us not supporting each other is exactly what they want. If you think about it, the more people who document the community, the more representation and insight we have from people within the community can only be a good thing because it’s real, authentic representation that hasn’t been moulded or exploited for a hetereonormative audience and which comes from different members of the community and which comes from different viewpoints from within the community.
For example, my experience as a white cis queer woman within the community is going to be different to someone who’s black or someone who’s trans and my work shouldn’t be consumed as the only representation of the community - but as part of a wider representation that needs to come from different people and different backgrounds. And the more we realise this and support each other, the more we can fight capitalism and all that comes with it (the patriarchy, heterenormativity, white supremacism) that tries to exploit and consume our work for their own needs and gain the recognition and success we deserve. I’m starting to think moving forward about starting an online archive with other photographers from our community as the next sort of step on what to do with the work I’ve been doing, but it’s still in the dream stages at the moment!
Maybe instead of trying to fit into this idea of creativity and originality that capitalism has co-opted and used for their own gains, we should just try and stay authentic to ourselves and the communities we’re representing and band together and support each other.
Additionally, if you didn’t have to work to survive, what would you be doing more of?
More documenting, more experimenting with my artistic practice and more taking care of myself. I’m quite open about my mental health and the effects that capitalism has had on that. I come from a working class background and as a result I’ve had to work several jobs for the majority of my late teens/adult life in order to be able to both pay rent and support my artistic practices, whilst balancing depression and anxiety since my early teens. It’s often resulted in me getting incredibly sick and being unable to work or practice for periods of time, which only adds to it because then I FEEL like I have to push myself harder and not give myself a break. I’ve ended up losing years of my life to depression and the struggle to get by, time I should have spent focusing on my practice and looking after myself which I wouldn't have had to do had I not had to work to survive.
Whilst this past year has been a struggle in many ways - I ended up losing a chunk of my income due to leaving my bar job just before the pandemic hit as I was starting to get more photography work which evaporated as soon as the pandemic hit and losing my income from nightlife - I was lucky enough to receive a bit of furlough from my 4 day a week day job which enabled me to cover my basic living expenses and gave me the time I needed to take care of myself and my mental health. Having time to myself before was such a luxury and something I felt I could not afford to spend time on, when in reality it should be a necessity and a basic human right. As I said though I was lucky and privileged to have that income, my friends who’s entire income was based in nightlife essentially lost everything.
The self employment grants were shit anyway but as a lot of people work cash in hand in nightlife, they had no way of proving their income and getting support. Universal credit only really benefits people like myself who already have some income coming in, a lot of the time if you don’t have income coming in the amount they give you isn’t enough to pay rent and bills let alone live. I was really hoping that some change would come from this pandemic - that we would look at this culture of people working several jobs to survive, that we would get a minimum wage that we can actually pay rent off, that we would make sure there was more support for people in terms of an actual liveable payment from universal credit but alas it seems barely anything has changed - and in all honesty I doubt it ever will so long as the tories stay in charge.
Photography: Emily Rose England | Words: Halima Jibril
