Lady Bunny
 
Photographer Michael James O’Brien‘s Girlfriend exhibition—now showing at Liverpool’s international photography festival—is an absolutely captivating array of vintage 90’s queer aethetics. While his subjects explode with life (and are ostensibly color people), the drag queens featured in his work have been captured in black and white, in front of nothing but a simple back-drop. This stark, austere composition has become his trademark, an artistic strategy to reveal the both the humanity of the queens alongside of their glamour. He’s been recording drag for 30 years, and his work stands out as a subtle look at a sensational art form.

O’Brien’s work was also featured in Girlfriend: Men, Women, and Drag a 1999 book by former New York Times Magazine style editor Holly Brubach. O’Brien actually took pictures of drag all over the world for the project, and though some are street photography and/or in color, the stark staging of the pictures obviously bear his sensibilities.
 

Butch Queens in Chanel
 

Ming Vauze
 

Billy Beyond and Sister Dimension
 

John Kelly as Joni Mitchell
 

Kabuki
 

Ebony Jet
 

Lavinia
 

Miss Guy
 

Ulrich
 

The Now Explosion‘s Lahoma Van Zandt
 
Via It’s Nice That