Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife

An illustrated history of queer nightlife as photographers, filmmakers and artists have pictured it, edited by the writer Amelia Abraham.

The book looks at what pictures have done for queer life after dark: how they helped scenes, subcultures and resistance take shape, and how they have sometimes put those same things at risk. It asks what decades of recording nightlife spaces on film and in photographs say about the people who used them, and where the camera meets pleasure, politics and protest. Abraham does not attempt a complete record or a timeline. The book is closer to a tribute to the people who went out, to those who felt they had to record it, and to artists who have used their work to imagine other ways of living.

The essays and conversations are by Abraham, Brontez Purnell, McKenzie Wark, Rene Matić with Ajamu X, Jack Parlett, Tavia Nyong'o, Adam Zmith, Sita Balani with Sunil Gupta, Ariel Goldberg, Sweatmother, Asa Seresin, and Legacy Russell with Tourmaline. The book has been covered by Frieze, the Guardian, Vogue, AnOther, It's Nice That and Cultured.

MACK, 2026. 284 pages, paperback with die-cut cover, 24 x 28 cm.