Artist Statement
Queer Inheritance
Queer Inheritance is a Getty grant-funded portrait project emphasizing the importance of intergenerational queer relationships and highlighting our shared history as a community through photographic preservation of LGBTQ+ elders. Subjects include authors, pastors, activists, politicians, artists, and entertainers from across the United States. Many were active during gay liberation and firsts in their fields despite facing extreme opposition and adversity. Through representation of multiple overlooked and invisible demographics of culture and society (community elders and queer individuals), these works ensure that our history remains powerfully visible by highlighting those whose lives and experiences established the foundation we build on.
Paul Monette, writer and activist whose life and writing inspired this project, wrote shortly before his AIDS-related death in 1995 on the loss of a queer friend and elder, “I understand now that it wasn’t just a friend who’d been taken away from me, but an elder and a mentor. [She] was my pioneer, a link to the dreams that made me different, the push I needed to go my own way”.
Queer Inheritance calls upon the legacies of those who fought for us today, emphasizing what we could lose from the absence of intergenerational chosen families from both a historical and spiritual perspective. These portraits inspire us to recognize our own potential, serving as a reminder that the fight for LGBTQ+ rights is not only within living memory but presently unfolding.
Political gay rights activist and storyteller, the late David Mixner, expressed to me while making a portrait for this project, “I feel like before I go, I have to shut out the lights for my generation”. As a storyteller myself, these portraits are my contribution to the custodians of our queer inheritance, a link to the dreams that made me different.
Artist Bio
Todd Joseph Danforth (American, b. 1990) is a documentary photographer and writer born and raised in the post-industrial Blackstone River Valley of Massachusetts. His photographic work is deeply informed by loss and explores themes of memory and legacy through the lens of family–both biologic and chosen. Ongoing projects include a multi-decade three part series titled The Art of Losing (2009 – present) exploring the ways we cope with both physical and emotional loss in community, with our families, and as individuals; and Queer Inheritance, a portrait series of LGBTQ+ elders meant to bridge the gap between generations of queer folks.
Danforth holds a BFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design. His work has been published and exhibited in the United States and internationally.