Lucida by Bronwyn Andrews for Homotopia 2023

A Photography Exhibition for Homotopia: Gods& Monsters by Bronwyn Andrews with a DJ set by Adejo.
Hardmans’ House on Rodney St in Liverpool was once the largest and most prestigious portrait photography studio in the North West. From the 1920s -1960s. Many people passing through this port city would be photographed there, the Georgian studio and house where E. Chambré Hardman and his wife Margaret worked and lived together.

Countless famous faces as well as ordinary, working class people of the time were photographed here when possessing an image of yourself was aspirational, a sign of taste. People wore their absolute best, posed in front of high-camp backgrounds meant to show class – Roman pillars, windows draped in fine velvet, immaculately posed.

Lucida is interested in digging into these archives and finding a queer narrative. Of the thousands of sitters – where are we? We have modes of being and existing which deserve celebration. This exhibition is a semiotic exploration of the signs and systems with which people present themselves and our visual queer culture.

Sitting alongside these archive explorations are to some of the vibrant queer faces in Liverpool today too – a contrast between two worlds, making something new, empowering and celebratory while looking at our hidden history.