The Images That Made Me

How much does imagery help shape the person we become? Which photographs are the ones we remember as changing us in some way––creatively, personally, professionally––or simply as marking the passage of time?

We ask industry leaders, artists and experts in visual culture to talk us through the five photographs that have brought them to where they are now. Think Desert Island Discs, but make it art.

Although she made her career start as a hair stylist and groomer for fashion editorial, Angel McQueen’s exposure to creative innovation really began as a child, when she was taken under the wing of her fashion designer uncle, and saw the industry rocked by his arresting, challenging and beautiful ideas. Angel has the shock-factor in her blood 🩸

Now a multi-disciplinary artist, here she shares some of the most formative photographs in her life, touching on gender, sexuality, fantasy and darkness.

Untitled, Daniel Archer [2024]

Daniel Archer, an amazing friend and photographer, took this quick snap of my creative partner Tino Kamal and I at the end of a shoot, and it means so much to me. It symbolises the beginning of a journey and the end of something else – the last photo of me as male presenting. I am trans female and I’m starting hormone therapy next month, so this image really captures that pivotal moment of transition, which Tino has been a very significant part of.

I first discovered Tino about ten years ago, on Tumblr, and there was something about him … we finally met in person a year ago when he was looking for someone to do hair and makeup for a shoot, and he’s an incredible man, my best friend. I love that when we are together we just play. He allows me to be unapologetically myself and says: ‘If haters are gunna come we turn up the volume louder.’ I think Angel was born because of him.

Sanitarium, Joel-Peter Witkin [1983]

I’ve always been compared to my uncle Lee [Alexander McQueen], as the only queer people in our family, and our relationship was very special. People who knew us both said we shared a sense of humour, and would answer things in a similar way, make the same kind of suggestions. He embraced me for who I was and nurtured me, and I spent a lot of time with him in his atelier. I was so lucky to see into his world, although he exposed me to things you probably shouldn’t expose to children, in terms of imagery.

This photograph was a huge inspiration to him, and it spoke to the darker experiences he had had, some of which I had also shared.

Nick Knight & Alexander McQueen

Lee used to say to me: ‘Play in the dark, don’t be scared of it. The darkest things have happened to you already, so allow yourself to find beauty in it.’ He always pushed people, pushed his collaborators to go further, so these Nick Knight works – when PhotoShop was in its infancy – are just incredible. Things that hadn’t been seen before. They show women who are to be feared. I’ve recently worked on a shoot for Tino with Nick Knight which is like coming full circle, in a way.

Larry Clark

I discovered Larry Clark right after Lee passed away, when I’d just turned 18. He’s also someone who plays in the dark – drugs and lost souls. His images can be very sexual, and my relationship with sex has always been very strange: desensitised, in a way, by how much I was exposed to as a child. Sex is at the core of society and yet we shame people about the sex that they do or do not have, and we can be desensitised and shocked by it at the same time.

I love to shock, I love works that shock, I love controversy. I’ve been celibate for two years and that shocks people because of how much sex features in my work. ‘Shocking’ doesn’t have to mean graphic, but it needs to be authentic. Strangely, a lot of the artists that I’ve referenced here have been called misogynists at some stage in their career, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.

Untitled [Eros Diary], Nobuyoshi Araki [2015]

I think there is a view that Japanese culture is very private, prim, proper … conservative. And then, here are these Shibari images that Araki made, or the beautiful ones of women hanging upside down that are highly sexualised. This one has so much beauty in her empowerment. She has her breast hanging out, sure, but she owns the space. Her engagement with the camera is so important – he has the camera so he’s presumed to be the one with the power but actually it seems to me like she’s using her sexuality as her power. I love women so much.

David LaChapelle

David LaChapelle – the queer icon! Breaking down stereotypes, making someone who was very overtly masculine look feminine, almost queer coded. Amazing. Photography is escapism for me. I love being able to leave this awful reality behind and put myself into a place where I can dream. Camp fantasy worlds.

END

As told to India Birgitta Jarvis.