Uncovering Queer Nightlife Through Robert Workman’s Archives
Image courtesy of the British Film Institute (BFI)
The ‘I’m Coming Out!’ exhibition for BFI Flare 2023 is a celebration of acceptance and authenticity in the highest form. For the London LGBTQIA+ film festival, the BFI have curated more than a week of events that honours queer cinema. They have partnered up with the Bishopsgate Institute to display the archives of Gay News photographer Robert Workman, exhibiting the feelings of liberation that are inherent to queer nightlife.
The club scene has often felt integral for queer liberation. Maybe it is the sense of escape, or the feeling of a safe place that makes it so important to us. Knowing that everyone under one roof not only accepts, but celebrates your authentic existence. From Porchester Hall in 1976 to the streets of Soho today, this desire to find a space to exist authentically feels universal. Nightlife is where community is birthed and culture is made.
No doubt, it takes an understanding and unapologetic lens to be able to capture these themes in the way Robert Workman once did. Working as a full-time photographer at Gay News, he brought his artistic eye to the forefront of the Gay Liberation Front and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. Campaigning for social and political reform, Workman was involved in the publication’s fight for acceptance for the queer community. As a result, it’s impossible to view Workman’s photographic diaries as anything but sociological, and thus essential in documenting LGBTQIA+ history.
Depicting queer people existing in a safe space is significant in itself, and this what Workman’s archives best portray. His lens captured LGBTQIA+ people living authentically; depicting moments of honesty, safely within the confines of nightclubs and away from the hateful rhetoric of the outside world. Whether that be bare skin on display, or bodies dancing in motion, it is this sense of truth that makes Workman’s artistic eye so striking. In particular, Workman’s capturing of Jean Fredericks’ Drag Balls fully encapsulates this empowerment without undermining the sense of whimsy - pertaining to the idea of liberation through elaborate costuming and avante-garde makeup.
This ‘Club Kids’ subculture Workman often captured was defined by empowerment through individualism. This queer sense of uniqueness spread from London to New York in the late 80s and 90s, where infamous places such as Covent Garden’s Blitz Club and NYC’s Danceteria became spaces of acceptance in the most radical yet artful forms. Deconstructing the conventions of gender, fashion, and overall culture in one space, these became environments where identity could be moulded and redefined in every outing. There was a sense of power that could be obtained and actualised by redefining modes of identity.
This power inherent in Workman’s photographic diaries is best seen in his series on the opening of Heaven nightclub in 1979. Nowadays it is hard to imagine that Charing Cross’ Heaven wasn’t the mainstream nightclub that it is today. The current reality of Heaven is not the same reality captured by Workman. Originally named ‘Global Village’, the space beneath the arches of Charing Cross stations opened up an environment for freedom and self-expression in a time where this was so often vehemently censored. Yet, Workman’s archives paired with old posters and newspapers allow for any viewers of the exhibition to be fully contextualised into Workman’s reality instead of ours. The Bishop Institute’s curation of the space and presentation of old archived badges, letters and clothing remind any viewer of the harsh realities that the LGBTQIA+ community once went through, in order to understand the significance of the mainstream acceptance we have now.
One cannot help but feel grateful. Through Robert Workman’s archives, we are transported back to a time of disapproval and thus made appreciative of the acceptance that we have today. Whether it be in our day-to-day or late at night in a club, the beauty in merely existing openly feels so essential in capturing queer culture. And this is what makes Robert Workman’s archives feel so necessary in uncovering today.