Dazed Beauty: Religion & Makeup

New work for How my religion shaped my relationship with makeup by Amrou Al-Kadhi for Dazed Beauty. Featuring Glamrou, Hafsa Qureshi, Raheem Mir and Miss Hope Springs.  “As a Muslim boy, reaching for my mother’s make-up brush resulted in verbal scalding and a night of repenting for Allah’s mercy. Make-up on a boy, I was taught, was an unimaginable insult. Hence when I started drag at the age of 19, it felt like the ultimate transgression against my religion. It’s been a decade since meeting my queen alter-ego,and I’ve come to discover something quite surprising: that the process of applying make-up …

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Work showing at the Hayward gallery’s Kiss My Genders

The Hayward gallery are currently exhibiting the show Kiss My Genders from June 12th – September 8th. I am showing ‘Glamrou’, an image by Amrou Al-Kadhi and I. The work was originally shot for Cause & Effect magazine in 2016 and was styled by Amnah Hafez. “Spanning the past 50 years, Kiss My Genders brings together over 100 artworks by artists from around the world who employ a wide range of approaches to articulate and engage with gender fluidity, as well as with non-binary, trans and intersex identities. Working across photography, painting, sculpture, installation and video, many of the artists in …

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New portraits for BBC for George Shelley’s documentary Learning to Grieve

I recently shot some portraits of George Shelley for new BBC Three documentary Learning to Grieve. “Having spent the last 12 months struggling to talk about his loss and to deal with it, George embarks on a series of extraordinarily candid and raw discussions with his parents and best friend in a bid to help him cope with, and better understand, the process of grieving.”  

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Exhibition: Represent! at the People’s History Museum

I am currently showing work at the People’s History Museum in Manchester at their show Represent! Voices 100 Years On. The exhibition features a selection of images from my Parade project, including pictures of Sisters Uncut. The show is running until until February 2019 – find out more about it here, and read about it below: “Represent! Voices 100 Years On reflects on those who campaigned for better representation; most famously the suffragists and the militant suffragettes.  The recently acquired Manchester suffragette banner will be displayed for the first time alongside sashes, brooches, photographs and cartoons, helping to paint a picture of what representation meant …

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Refinery 29: Crystal

I shot portraits of Crystal aka Tom Rasmussen for Refinery 29, for the piece Inside My Makeup Bag: Drag Queen Edition. “In my makeup bag is the hardware which allows me to finally live my childhood fantasies. In my makeup bag is a lifeline to an expression of my gender that saved my life – that saves so many people’s lives. In my makeup bag is a history book, connecting me to the radical queens, queers, butch dykes and trans folk who fought for me to be able to paint my face the way I want to paint it. In …

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