Photo Day: Queer Family and the Practice of Photographing Together

Abstract

This article examines Photo Day, a participatory portrait project staged between 2023 and 2025 at the Hunt-Simes Institute in Sexuality Studies (HISS). Developed within the program ‘Reimagining the Queer Classroom’, Photo Day reworked the conventions of school photography by changing how participants entered, shaped and withdrew from the photographic encounter. Drawing on queer formalism, queer kinship, family photography and person-centred therapeutic practice, the article examines consent, refusal, hesitation, play, proximity and collective self-presentation as elements of photographic method. The article argues that the queerness of Photo Day lies in these conditions of making and in the temporary relations organized around the camera. Through an account of the project’s development and practice, the article offers a relational photographic methodology for artists, researchers and educators working in community-based and socially engaged settings.