Recipient of the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence, Bachelor of Arts (Photography)(Honours) Highly Commended.
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CRUISING FOR A BRUISING
2022. Photobook, 210 x 297 mm
How can a camp vision transform humdrum suburbia?
Typically banal, inconsequential, and known for monotony, the suburbs are often overlooked. Cruising For a Bruising meticulously explores Naarm (Melbourne)’s humdrum suburbia through a camp vision. Growing up queer in suburbia left me with a lingering dislike for the suburbs. However, by photographing them I have found my love for them. Through photography, the typically mundane suburbia of Naarm can be transformed with a camp vision to become something of interest and importance, as well as humour.
The title of the series derives its meaning from the gay historical act of ‘cruising’, where gay men would engage in anonymous sex in public toilets. Intended as a double entendre, whereby expressing yourself as a queer person in the suburbs can sometimes be scary – as though you are cruising for a bruising.
Included in the photobook are archival images from my childhood, accompanied by writing on growing up queer in suburbia.
An excerpt from the book reads: ‘I hope that through the passing of these pages, you may see suburbia in a new light, as I do, and appreciate it for what I think it is. Humdrum suburbia is just like camp – good because it’s awful, endearing because it’s tacky, loveable because it’s so helpless.’
Cruising For A Bruising serves as a love letter to the vanishing humdrum suburbia of Naarm, and finding beauty and humour through a queer, camp lens.
Kyle Archie Knight is a Wiradjuri, queer, multidisciplinary documenter.
