Sex, Clubs, Dissent charts the visual history of queer nightlife through photography, film, and art-making — examining how the impulse to document these spaces intersects with pleasure, politics, and forms of resistance across decades.
About This Book
Edited by Amelia Abraham, this book asks what it means to photograph a queer space — and what that act of looking costs or enables. Moving across dancefloors, strip clubs, and saunas, it treats queer nightlife not as spectacle but as a site of political formation, erotic possibility, and collective memory. The images gathered here are not neutral documents: they can alienate as much as they invite, and the book is honest about that tension. Rather than a chronological survey, Sex, Clubs, Dissent functions as a critical love letter — to those who stayed out, who felt compelled to document, and who used image-making to imagine new ways of existing. Essential reading for anyone engaged with queer culture, visual culture, and the politics of representation.
Key Features
- 284 pages of photography, film stills, and artist works tracing queer nightlife's visual culture
- Essays and conversations by Amelia Abraham, Brontez Purnell, McKenzie Wark, Rene Matić and Ajamu X, Jack Parlett, Tavia Nyong'o, Adam Zmith, Sita Balani and Sunil Gupta, Ariel Goldberg, Sweatmother, Asa Seresin, and Legacy Russell and Tourmaline
- Published by MACK, 2026
What You'll Discover
- How photography and film have both fostered and at times jeopardised the formation of queer subcultures and spaces
- The relationship between image-making and queer resistance — how documentation becomes a form of political assertion
- The contradictions embedded in representing nightlife: images that are erotic, violent, joyful, and alienating, often simultaneously
- How artists and filmmakers have used their practice to dream new modes of being into existence, beyond the merely documentary
About the Author
Amelia Abraham is the editor of this volume and a contributor, with her work here focused on the intersections of image-making, queer practice, and nightlife culture. Additional biographical details are [Details available upon request].
Specifications
- Format: Paperback with die-cut cover
- Pages: 284
- Dimensions: 24 x 28 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781917651523
- Publisher: MACK
- Publication Date: 2026
Perfect For: Readers working across queer studies, visual culture, photography, and the politics of representation — alongside artists, curators, and anyone with a serious investment in how nightlife shapes collective identity.