While its current pop cultural airtime might suggest it, queer clubbing isn’t experiencing a renaissance, exactly. For as long as sound systems, low-lit rooms and, well, queer people have existed, the club has served as a refuge; a sanctuary from a hostile world, a site of creative resistance and (often self) invention that has shaped the world at large.

Even over the past two years, there are almost too many examples to my point. Era-defining musical outputs from Charli XCX, Troye Sivan, and FKA twigs (and soon, from mother Madonna herself); fashion collections from brands from GmbH and Oscar Ouyang to Seán McGirr’s McQueen and even Emilia Wickstead (whose spring 2026 collection drew upon the style of gay patron saint/sinner Robert Mapplethorpe); and just this week, Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, which received a feverish reception at Cannes Film Festival.

Creatively impressive as these examples are, and important as their presence at the forefront of culture is, most seem to stop short at the aestheticization of queer club culture—similar to how fetish culture has been popularized, too, in my opinion. Few mainstream representations really get under the skin of these spaces, predicating on telephone-game conveyances of hedonistic substance use, the carnal writhe of bodies caught in strobes, and the shock appeal of what goes down in a darkroom.

Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife—a new anthology of archival photography and commissioned texts—bucks that trend, faithfully encapsulating “the essence of queer nightlife [and] the innovative ways queer photographers have chosen to document it,” according to its author, Amelia Abraham, a London-based writer, editor, and queer dance floor regular. A chronicle, study, and love letter to queer clubbing and its lore—seen through the eyes of creatives who have committed significant parts of their lives to it—the book comprises an intentionally “quite porous or slippery” dialogue between word and image, from Asa Seresin’s sparkling essay on the spatial contingencies of sexual identity to a Wolfgang Tillmans image of a rat going into a drain. “I have no idea if this was taken in a queer nightlife context, but the metaphor amused me!”

“I think the obvious way to do this book would have been lots of photos on dance floors. Those are in there, but there are photos of daylight in the book and also photos of domesticity—nightlife isn’t just about being ‘out’—it’s the before and the after, the getting ready, the time you never make it to the club because you’re having too much fun at home, or you can’t afford or be bothered to go out in the end,” Abraham says. “It’s the kiss outside the club or the person you unexpectedly wake up with. I wanted the book to encompass all of that.”

What you’ll take from the book will hinge on your relationship to its subject matter—after all, queer nightlife is, in itself, an embodied, sensorial vignette of life at its most voluptuous, emotionally heightened, and progressive. A particularly salient line of commentary that runs through its pages, though, is less about how integral style is to queer night culture, but how integral queer club style has been to style—nay, fashion!—culture at large. Just think of the influence that movements like ballroom, or figures like Leigh Bowery, have played in the development of fashion’s contemporary vernacular. So many of them find a home alongside one another in Sex, Clubs, Dissent’s pages, which, below, Abraham unpacks in all their grit, intimacy, and glorious style.

Vogue: It’s a beautifully evocative title: Sex, Clubs, Dissent. But before we get into the book, could you tell us about your personal relationship to the book’s central subject matter?

Amelia Abraham: Putting “sex” in the title was deliberate—and not because sex sells. Actually, the opposite—I think, despite queer visibility, we’re still living in a puritanical climate when it comes to sex, and specifically queer sex. I wanted to foreground how pleasure, intimacy, and sexual expression have been central to queer nightlife since the beginning, and not leave out images of kink, cruising, or sex clubs, often deemed the less “palatable” side of queer life.

Clubs came because I am interested in the architecture of spaces, but also the social element, the way we form friendships, and meet our people. There are photos of empty clubs and spaces in the book, and they are almost eerie—it’s the people that make the space, of course.

Dissent was important because I think nightlife is a political space. A lot of activism in the HIV/AIDS era was born out of nightlife, and I wanted to consider protests and performance as a form of queer nightlife, too. “Dissent,” to me, is a nod to counterculture, the way these spaces can challenge what is accepted by the majority and foster new visions or ideas.

What was the initial premise for the book? Is it something you’d harbored intentions of doing for some time?

I first thought about this book five or six years ago, because I went looking for it and it didn’t exist, and I thought: “What??” Endless artists have made work in and around queer nightlife, but I couldn’t find a book that brought them together or thought about the links between their work. When I realized five years later no one had done it yet, I thought: “Ok, now it’s time.”

I wanted the focus to be on the act of imaging itself, not just the spaces or scenes as documented through photography. It felt more interesting to me to think about questions like: How are photographers thinking about representation and visibility? What risks or problems come with photographing underground spaces? Why are these visual archives important? What’s the relationship between queer performance and the camera?

I had a list of photographers I knew I wanted to include in the beginning, like Phyllis Christopher, Del LaGrace Volcano, Linda Simpson, Lola Flash, Wolfgang Tillmans, Bernice Mulenga. Most I had met along the way, partly because I’ve written about, read about, and been fascinated by queer nightlife for years. It was all pretty intuitive, one big process of nerding out. Endless conversations led to more recommendations. Annoyingly, I am discovering photographers all the time I wish were in the book.

The book is anchored as much by rigorous written essays, interviews, and other text contributions as it is by photographs. Can you tell me more about why that was important?

I think I got overexcited. There were so many writers and thinkers I love that I wanted to ask to be in the book. I definitely wanted there to be artist conversations, because we needed to hear from them about their work—like Ajamu X and Rene Matić talking about how their work links to pleasure activism, which Adriene Maree Brown defines as: “The work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy.” Pleasure activism feels inextricable from queer nightlife.

I particularly love the conversation between the writer Legacy Russell and artist Tourmaline, called Clock Those Dreams. At the end, Tourmaline uses the phrase “now what”—I think that’s what queer nightlife—at its best—does; respond to what we need at any given time—artistically, spiritually, politically.

The relationship between queer clubs, the fashion institution, and style culture is pretty well documented, but how do you think the book brings this relationship to light?

Firstly, I think it shows the level of experimentation and playfulness. I think of the photo of Leigh Bowery by Dave Swindells, dancing alone and wearing a merkin (if you know what that is). Some of the photos are just so camp—like Kary Kwok’s image from Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, which is pure camp fashion chaos, and famous for it. Or Linda Simpson’s photo of Lady Bunny in a sequined gown on a leopard print sofa, with a trademark beehive—an example of a queer icon with an iconic look. Then Mirko Albini’s photos of Plastic, a nightclub in Milan where people really dressed up so imaginatively—a lot of those looks could be described as “regal and ridiculous” at the same time. We have always been high camp, and found pleasure and expressed humor through fashion—it would have been amiss not to celebrate that.

Also, something that’s evident when you bring these images together is how gestural they are. It’s not just what you wear, it’s how you wear it. Gender expression and personal identity are construed by clothing, but it’s also the movement, the posture, the pose. There are so many amazing poses in this book. A favorite being Charan Singh’s studio portraits from India. Here I was thinking about how the universal language of movement filters from nightlife into the everyday.

What are some of your favorite images in the book from a style perspective?

There is such a breadth of style in the book, and I think that speaks to the breadth of how queer people express themselves, from leather scenes (I love the photo of Black leather dykes, which we rarely see) to the glamour of trans pageants (also little seen!)

I’m in love with the photos of drag kings by Del LaGrace Volcano, Efrain Gonzalez, and Christa Holka—drag king style is so under-explored compared to drag queens, the cowboy references and tailoring and leather and bomber jackets…

I also love the ballroom photos by Elegance Bratton. The writer Madison Moore (who isn’t in the book, but was a reference) talks about Fabulousness as a—particularly Black—queer aesthetic through which marginalized people reclaim agency and creativity. That shows in these photos.

How has Sex, Clubs, Dissent made you reflect on the spaces that you participate in?

It’s made me realize that I find it annoying when there are too many phones out in a club space. I like presence and connection. I think we feel freer without feeling like we might end up on someone’s reel. A lot of the photographers in the book were shooting analogue, and they were deeply a part of the club or scene they were photographing.

Bring that back—that one photographer who is trusted and part of the community and documents these scenes thoughtfully, over time, with deep consideration and understanding. Shout out to Roxy Lee, who is that for Adonis, and in the book, and also Dani d’Ingeo and Michele Baron, also in the book, who are doing that within queer London nightlife today.

I think McKenzie Wark puts it well in her essay: “Not everything needs be exposed. The image brings with it a regime of capture, fixing, flattening. We might not want that. Some parties have a no-photo policy. They’re not for tourists. They’re not for extraction into the social media machine. We like it that way, but we’ll queer that rule, like any other. Not without putting some thought into it. And some love.”

Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife is available to purchase now via Mack and select bookshops.