Andrew Printer

In 2013, I made a series of photographs of middle-aged men.

The series was inspired by elderly women I once noticed sitting behind street-facing windows in southern Europe, framed by lace curtains. Most were dressed in black. Widows, I presumed. Still. Resigned. Happy—perhaps.

I feared I was becoming one of them, in my own gay way, in mourning.

Finished.

Excerpt from “Evidence,” Substack

This set is one example from decades of documentary portraiture and photojournalism for The Advocate, the Miami Herald, and other publications.

It captures Fantasy Fest (2015), an extraordinary annual celebration that takes over Key West, Florida, for nearly a week. Its color, narrative, and peculiarity run through my writing.

Made in 2008, while I was in graduate school, these photographs occupy confusing domestic spaces: ordinary family life alongside nakedness, uncertain sexuality, watchfulness, and an absent but persistent female presence.

I didn’t understand the subtext at the time—not in these photographs or much of my visual work. I was picking at things I couldn’t yet name. In my writing, I finally do: family, sexuality, shame, confused intimacy, and a taboo I could only approach indirectly before.

I couldn’t have imagined the deepfake potential of AI fifteen years ago. I don’t think “fake news” had been said out loud yet. But I knew about edits, filters, and Photoshop—the ease of rearranging reality until it meant something else, then sending it out into the world.

I was a photographer—originally a documentary one—but I had begun to doubt the accuracy of everything except the smallest gesture, rendered with primitive tools.

Meaning didn’t matter. Expertise didn’t either. Nor did an audience.

Excerpt from “The Daily Unusual,” Substack

These photographs were included in my MFA thesis exhibition (2010).

Some reproduce documents I found while researching the archives of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University Bloomington. Others come from my own archive and depict people who were central to my life. Each is the last photograph I have of that person. Rather than choose the “perfect” image, I chose one marked by an error: overexposure, uncharacteristic, a blink, backlighting, grain.

This early installation of photographs, central to Beyond the Surface, a group exhibition I co-curated in 2006, responded to the push for gay marriage within the broader LGBTQ community, with a particular focus on representations of gay men.

Different men. Different linen. Same bed. Asleep.