Photographer Matías Alvial Is Set On Changing the Parameters of the Queer Canon

AGE: 27
BASED IN: New York/Santiago
NOMINATED BY: Lyle Ashton Harris

The first film camera I owned was the one my parents used to record my childhood in Chile. During those years, the machine pointed its lens at me. It wasn’t until 2020 that I shifted that dynamic—for the first time in my life, I was behind the lens. When explaining this art-thought to mi viejo, he surprised me with an extra fun fact: He told me that he purchased the camera on Canal Street during his first visit to New York in 2001, the same neighborhood where I develop my film.

I had visa issues during the pandemic, so instead of going back home to Chile, I chose to start fresh elsewhere. I hopped on a plane and went to the U.K. I questioned why I hadn’t returned to Chile—unresolved issues with machismo, sexism, and homophobia had clouded my judgment. Changed by my solitude, I decided to confront [the idea of] home.

My work now explores this same line of questioning: What is home? How do queer people create a place for themselves in this world? So much of queer art is focused on loss and suffering, and I refuse to add to that canon. I want to keep documenting people’s joy instead. I wish to travel to the remote corners of the world and to see the infinite iterations of how queerness manifests itself.