Frost-soft pastels printed on rich maple wood panels, softly colored stories of explosive personalities, nightlife performers on a sunlit beach, striking poses born from the breaking down of the contemporary need to constantly pose.. Photographer Luke Kraman’s indelibly atmospheric photos of dominatrixes and drag queens, trans legends, DJs, artists and club personalities unleash contrasting contrasts that give rise to a unique zone of expression.
“These interactions and the resulting portraits are moments when I felt balanced amidst the contradictions of my life,” he says of capturing the subjects featured in “Final Selects One,” his debut solo photography exhibition, which opens at MRKT Gallery, San Francisco, on November 9. “Chaotic/orderly. Vulnerable/composed. Hot/cold. Present/dreaming. Subtle/contrast. These liminal spaces are inherently queer. Neither this nor that but both, everyone, someone and constantly in question.
These words are taken from the artist’s statement which reads more like a daily diary – what she has read (Patti Smith, Brontez Purnell), where she has traveled (splitting her time between San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles) – than a dusty pick me. academic analysis, excavating another fertile dichotomy: a lighthearted and dryly funny approach to a meticulous process of artistic discovery and production. The fabulous figures portrayed in “Final Selects One” are disarmingly eccentric and often ethereally gorgeous, but at the same time they simply reflect Kraman’s daily encounters and personal circle of girls.
“They are artists, strangers-turned-friends, and anyone I bump into on a shoot,” he writes. “Everyone was asked to pause their pushing and shoving to simply be there. To me this is beauty: what we see when you don’t think you’re being seen. That calm or acceptance is if nothing else real, and I think it’s important to maintain it. It’s really messed up times out there.”
For Kraman, the road to “Final Selects One” was direct, in a roundabout way. “I’ve been taking pictures since I was eight,” he says. “It all started with disposable cameras. I grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, and I did a report on the park for school and took photos. This is my first memory taking photos.
“But my first memory of being really entranced by photography was when my grandparents had this little haunted country house in Cornwall, Connecticut, which I later found out may have been the inspiration for Blair Witch Projectbecause there in the woods there are abandoned colonial ruins. It’s really disturbing. We grew up going there on weekends, as city kids, to immerse ourselves in nature. And there was a closet, ironically, that I remember going into and finding boxes and boxes of slide film that my grandmother brought in with a Rolleiflex. I stared at them for hours; that’s where my obsession began.
A “darkroom nerd” in high school who ditched disposables for 35 millimeters, Kraman was such a well-known photography enthusiast that his principal had him teach younger students while still a senior, in exchange of the possibility for Kraman to add more photography. lessons to your schedule. In college, he transitioned into film and multimedia art, but a moment of retro inspiration brought him back. “Towards the end of college, someone photographed me with a classic Hasselblad and I became obsessed with this camera. For five years I saved up and got one from a Norwegian man on eBay. I still shoot with the same camera today.
“For a long time I focused on landscape. Secretly I was very interested in people, I was surrounded by very interesting people. But I never like to be photographed, so I was never able to make that leap. Then COVID arrived and something changed. It was that irony again, that contrast: just when I couldn’t be with people, I suddenly felt the need to document them.
Kraman’s portraits of nightlife and demimonde fashion inherit a long legacy of documenting such lively people, but unlike firecracker sensationalism (Warhol, Arbus) or ephemeral intensity (Goldin, Tillmans), Kraman differentiates himself in meticulous negotiations with his subjects to “deprogram” them about how they should feel when a camera lens is pointed in their direction. “Something unnatural, or maybe just different, happens to body language when a camera is present. I have long conversations with the person I’m photographing about their personal experience with this, their story often gets really profound.
“Once we talk, I see this amazing transformation, not necessarily of comfort with the camera, or disdain for it, but a new relationship that allows them their own space in the process to express themselves authentically. Like, “We’re here together and this is who I am.” I worked with people with body dysmorphia issues or people who were actively trying to figure out their gender identity during the time of our filming. Create space for them to let go of the pressures surrounding expectations and accept what is already there.”
The discovery of this method of conversation was a disaster. “My first portrait subject was my friend Viv, who is pursuing a master’s degree in art therapy: she is also a dominator and an astrologer. She’s a very soulful hippie who used to roll joints with lavender in them that corresponded to the phase of the moon we were currently in. He said, I need some domme photos and I thought, OK, let’s do the softer side of domme photography.
“Well, I got the movie back and it was all a mess. My camera had malfunctioned. We had to do it all over again. It was a valuable lesson because when we shot again, we already had this comfort level. I thought I’ll put on something weird and shoot her from below. This got her into her mindset and showed me the importance of having a genuine relationship with someone.
The soft, pastel hue of the portraits in “Final Selects One” – from impromptu indoor shots like non-binary drag artist Posse lying on a bed of wigs in her Mexico City apartment or action shots from Ever’s queer techno camp Afters and an Andrew James’ fashion show in Los Angeles—is another important factor for Kraman, a slightly vintage aura of the images that echoes his analogue equipment and relaxed conversational process, opening the portal to liminal queer space making things a little more feminine.
“You can do gritty things with the Hasselblad,” he says, “but I like soft things. I use Kodak Portra film, which has a softer grain and handles skin tones really nicely. When I shoot, I overexpose a little, and in post I turn up the darkness a little and soften the colors. It provides a guideline for all my work.
“I also shoot medium format because it’s square and satisfies my Virgo OCD. I often work on an emotional level with my subjects, and the squareness and softness bring a kind of calm. The format offers limitations that help my overactive brain process all these feelings in an artistic way: I thrive on the limitations of the medium into which to pour all this energy and transgression. It’s that contrast, once again.
LUKE KRAMAN: THE FINAL SELECT ONE opening reception November 9, 7-10pm, MRKT Gallery, SF. More information here.
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