Helen Maurene Cooper: Blue Angels, on view at Arcadia Exhibitions at Rosedale Gallery from October 16, 2025 through October 4, 2026, presents a striking body of photographic portraits that bridge centuries of image-making and identity. Created in 2017 in collaboration with drag queens and kings from Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami, the series revisits early photographic processes to explore how LGBTQ+ lives might have appeared—and been understood—within the visual culture of the 19th century. The result is a compelling dialogue between historical technique and contemporary presence.
Working with collodion-based methods, Cooper produces ambrotypes on black glass alongside delicate salt prints, materials that demand patience, precision, and physical proximity between artist and subject. These one-of-a-kind objects resist easy reproduction, emphasizing the individuality and dignity of each sitter. By employing technologies associated with Victorian portraiture, Cooper constructs an imagined archive: a community that was rarely acknowledged openly in its own time, yet undeniably existed. The images feel both familiar and uncanny, suspended between past and present, fact and possibility.
At the core of
Blue Angels is a meditation on visibility and misrepresentation. Cooper’s portraits counter the absence and distortion that have long shaped the historical record of queer lives. While the aesthetic language recalls an era marked by rigid social codes, the sitters’ self-possession and theatricality assert autonomy and pride. The work quietly asks how prejudice is embedded in visual traditions, and how reworking those traditions can open space for empathy, recognition, and continuity across generations.
Cooper’s broader practice, grounded in sustained research and cross-disciplinary inquiry, informs the conceptual rigor of this series. Her commitment to photography as a historically responsive medium is evident in every detail, from the material choices to the collaborative process itself.
Blue Angels ultimately invites viewers to reflect on how images shape collective memory, suggesting that the past is not fixed, but can be reimagined to foster stronger, more inclusive understandings of community and belonging.
Images:
Helene Maurene Cooper “Hanky Punk,” 2017-19, Ambrotype on black glass (one of a kind) 4 1/12″ x 3 1/2″, Image courtesy of the artist © Helene Maurene Cooper