Wish You Were Here: Lola Flash

Video (1:02:15): Lola Flash gave a talk about her creative practice as a queer photographer March 6, 2025 at the George Eastman Museum’s Dryden Theatre near Rochester, New York.

“Lola Flash is an artist and activist whose vibrant photographic work encompasses themes of race, gender, and intergenerational representation. As a longtime figure in the downtown arts community of New York City, Flash participated in AIDS activist poster campaigns created by Gran Fury, the media offshoot of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Many of the photographs created at this point in Flash’s career were for their Cross-Colour series, a collection of inverted color images that feature a bold and richly saturated portrayal of their personal life and activism in the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, Flash’s projects have used portraiture to push back against dominant beauty standards and negative depictions of marginalized communities, instead promoting and amplifying positive visual representations of people who are often overlooked.
Lola Flash is the Board President for Queer|Art and an active member of Kamoinge, a collective of Black photographers who work to preserve the history and culture of the African Diaspora. In addition to their career as an artist, Flash was a K-12 educator for many years and is now a retired teacher focused solely on their creative practice.” – George Eastman Museum

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