Lola Flash

Overview
View works. Lola Flash, Paris Pride (Cross-Colour Series), circa 1990
Paris Pride (Cross-Colour Series), circa 1990
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Lola Flash (b. 1959, Montclair, NJ) is a queer photographer and activist at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics who has been working for over forty years. Their work confronts and dismantles stereotypes around gender, sexuality and race fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving queer black legacies. Their art and activism are profoundly intertwined, playing an integral part in the ACT UP movement during the AIDS crisis in New York and garnering acclaim in the 1989 Kissing Doesn’t Kill campaign. Flash is notoriously known for their cross-color technique or using the 4x5 film format. Flash is continually working on their life-long series titled [sur]passing, which is based on a series of a continuum of larger-than-life size color in which the models are shot with a large format camera from towering urban vantage points, highlighting the re-generation of a new inner-city culture. This series aims to reach the next level, as it will include such nobility as Deborah Willis, Henry Louise Gates, Cornel West, and traveling to every port which African Slaves were dispensed.
 
Flash received a bachelor’s degree from the Maryland Institute and a master’s degree from the London College of Printing, UK. Their work spans across the US and Europe and is part of major collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National African American Museum of History and Culture, and recently the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Among Flash's recent exhibitions are What If Women Ruled the World? at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece as well as Images on Which to Build at the Chicago Cultural Center, I’ll Be Your Mirror: Reflections of the Contemporary Queer at the Mighty Real Queer Detroit Biennial and Trust Me at The Whitney Museum, New York. Flash will soon be continuing their series ‘syzygy, the vision’ with the backing of the Pollock Krasner Foundation. They are also a valued member of the Kamoinge Collective and serve on the Board of Queer Art, underscoring their ongoing commitment to community and advocacy through visual art. Flash lives and works in New York.
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