Videographer and photographer Matt Lambert is creating sensitive queer punk visibility.

Cover photo: Vitium: Embrace, by Matt Lambert (2015). Via Paddle8.

This article is part of my 30 Living Queer Artists Worth Celebrating in 2019 series. June is Pride Month, commemorating the international gay rights movement that began June 28th, 1969, with the Stonewall riots of New York. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the event. I’m celebrating all month long!

WARNING: The following article features and/or discusses graphic nudity, pornography, homoerotica, and sex.

Queer Punk

Los Angeles born, Berlin-based Matt Lambert is a videographer and photographer capturing queer punk youth culture. He’s been praised for his authenticity and sensuality. Lambert gained international prominence within the last decade. Dazed listed Matt Lambert as one of the top 100 creative influencers of 2015.

Lambert finds inspiration in a variety of sources, including street culture, pornography, German expressionism, and queercore music like Pansy Division. “Punk can often represent this sort of toxic masculinity that I really don’t believe in. I think in its inception, it was a really wonderful, political thing and it definitely morphed into something that was very aggressive and very violent and could oftentimes be homophobic,” Lambert notes.

Lambert’s creative work is set in a world blissfully free of homophobic inhibition. Models and friends are encouraged to pose however they want, lending Lambert’s photography and videography an intensely raw, natural, and physical quality, even a sense of voyeurism.

Intimacy in the Digital Age

Of course, the digital age has fundamentally changed the nature of 21st century love, intimacy, and relationships. Lambert’s work is a direct confrontation of this; he explains, “Digital spaces have changed the dynamics of love. A lot of my upcoming film work weaves virtual identities and and interactions as underlying subtexts. Rather than proposing a nihilistic view of social media v sexuality, I tend to focus on its triumphant qualities. Platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Grindr, Tinder, Facebook, etc. become spaces for people to explore and educate themselves as their own pace.”

“They allow for communities to build and places to gives voices to the voiceless. They allow for kids to define themselves within the safety of their own homes before taking it to the streets. They allow for more dynamic relationships and an acceleration of communication when it comes to sexuality. They can kill relationships as well, but I think love and sex is much better off with social media.”

The digital age has also made pornography ubiquitous. As of 2016, approximately 30% of all internet data consumption is porn. Just 24 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education in school. And only California, Colorado, Iowa, Washington, and Washington D.C. include laws or regulations requiring sex education to be LGBT inclusive. This means that most teenagers — especially those who are questioning or queer — have their first encounters with sex online. In fact, an estimated 90% of boys and 60% of girls are exposed to internet porn by the age of 18.

Lambert is aware of the dilemma and he finds it important to normalize — and sensitize — sex. “People, especially now more than ever, learn about their sexuality through porn. If all you have is the trash that’s out there, then you’re just going to start fucking like a porn star and you’re going to learn how to demean people and dehumanize people and have impersonal, non-intimate sexual experiences.”

Commercialization & Censorship of Queerness

Many of Lambert’s clients are in the field of advertising and fashion, including Givenchy, Gucci, Marc Jacobs, and Yves Saint Laurent. While modern fashion has been pioneered by queer designers, Lambert admits, “Sometimes, I look at the work that has been done in the field of fashion and I get angry. First of all, there is such a gross sense of appropriation within the fashion world that preys on authenticity. People and dynamic subcultures are treated just like a Pinterest.”

Lambert’s response is to photograph his own friends. “I almost never shoot models unless I’m obligated too. It can become cold and clinical. Perhaps a reaction to this is fashions seeming return to raw and intimate imagery.”

Of course, Lambert’s more explicit homoerotica has posed problems online. When asked about censorship, he explains, “In social platforms, of course, all the time: my Instagram account was taken down before and I’ve had several legal conversations with publications and publishers about how to walk that thin line.”

Nevertheless, Lambert is unashamed of his work. He explains, “I feel like if someone’s not going to hire me because there’s a scene in a film of two guys who are in love hooking up, then fuck ‘em. 20 years from now I don’t think the work that people think is edgy now is going to be edgy anyway. It’s going to be normal. 50-60 years ago, couples weren’t able to be pictured in the same bed on television.”

Consent & Objectification

The fashion industry has a history of objectification, sexual harassment, and abusive practices. Agents and noteworthy photographers hold tremendous power over a model’s career. This dynamic, in addition to half-nude private shoots, is a breeding ground for sexual abuse. American Apparel founder Dov Charney has faced a litany of lawsuits regarding his predatory behavior against women.

Though less acknowledged, male models also face sexual harassment. The fashion industry is dominated by gay designers, gay stylists, and gay photographers. In 2012, former Abercrombie & Fitch model Ben Bowers, filed a suit alleging that agent Brian Hillburn ordered him to strip and masturbate during a photo shoot. Just last year, over ten male models and assistants accused famous fashion photographers Bruce Weber and Mario Testino of sexual misconduct.

About exploitative advertising, Lambert proclaims, “When it comes to homoeroticism, there’s a gross fetishisation of young, straight men in fashion that feels sleazier than porn to me. So much gay work that plays with extremes and clichés are aimed to shock the viewer.”

In another interview, he adds, “I give importance to not objectifying the person I’m shooting and not reducing them into a sexual object by not being too referential or too fashion. This idea of intimacy with the person you’re looking at — not necessarily as the sexual, but like the intimacy between friends — comes naturally, through the relationships with the people that I am shooting.”

Representation as Empathy

By the transgressive nature of homoerotica, Matt Lambert’s work is political. He declares, “I’m a very politically-minded person and I do see my work as being political because it’s an unapologetic and celebratory representation of people who are often politically marginalised.”

Everyone wants to see themselves represented in media, but, perhaps more importantly, visibility creates empathy. Lambert notes, “The more intimately you present a subject, the harder it is to disassociate from them. When people are reduced to stereotypes, it’s so easy to minimise their experiences. When women in fashion are shot more like human beings, it has the power to change the way young men perceive them: from a commodity to an equal. It’s the same with the representation of homosexuality in the media; there’s been a slow shift in the last couple of years, in Europe at least.”

Just this week, Sephora unveiled a new video featuring the transgender and non-binary community directed by Matt Lambert. Lambert will undoubtedly continue to normalize queer visibility, intimacy, and love. Keep up to date with him on Instagram.