Art of Pride and San Diego City College Present: “Towards a Queer Historiography” — Reclaiming History Through the LGBTQIA+ Lens
By Joslyn Hatfield
For two decades, Art of Pride, a program of San Diego Pride, has served as a creative home for LGBTQIA+ artists to express their truth, build community, and preserve our shared cultural history. This winter, the program proudly joins Lambda Archives of San Diego and San Diego City College in an exciting new collaboration: Towards a Queer Historiography: Photographic Practices and the Archive.
This innovative project reimagines how queer history is told, taught, and seen. Students in San Diego City College’s History of Photography course spent the semester exploring the Lambda Archives—one of the nation’s most significant repositories of LGBTQIA+ historical material—and used its photographs, documents, and ephemera as catalysts for their own creative work. The result is a remarkable collection of images that re-create, reinterpret, and reclaim moments of LGBTQIA+ history, connecting the past to the present through the students’ own artistic lenses.
A Legacy Rooted in Community and Creativity
The Art of Pride program was first organized in 2005 by community activist Judy Forman, better known as Judy the Beauty on Duty, alongside artist and activist John Keasler. Together, they recognized a need for intentional civic and artistic spaces—places where LGBTQIA+ artists could share their creativity openly and where community members could discover, support, and celebrate queer art.
Over the years, Art of Pride grew into a beloved annual fixture at the San Diego Pride Festival, providing local LGBTQIA+ artists an accessible venue to exhibit and sell their work. The program also created opportunities for featured artists to showcase their pieces at the San Diego Pride office in North Park, expanding visibility for queer creatives and strengthening San Diego’s vibrant LGBTQIA+ arts ecosystem.
In 2020, Art of Pride became an official San Diego Pride program, launching a new chapter of deeper investment in LGBTQIA+ artists year-round. Today, the program continues to uplift and connect artists while expanding its educational and community-based collaborations—like this year’s partnership with City College and Lambda Archives.
Centering Queer Narratives, Expanding Possibilities
At its core, Art of Pride is a volunteer-led cooperative committed to celebrating the diverse experiences and artistic expression of LGBTQIA+ artists. Guided by a mission that centers artists of color, women artists, transgender, nonbinary, and intersex artists, and intergenerational creators, Art of Pride leverages art as a tool to combat homophobia and transphobia, foster connection, and tell the stories that too often go untold.
This collaboration honors that mission by placing students directly in conversation with the historical record—inviting them not only to learn from it, but to expand it. Through their photographs, students explore questions of presence, erasure, identity, and representation, offering both homage to queer ancestors and critique of how histories are constructed.
Their work embodies the power of art to resist invisibility. By reinterpreting archival images and imagining new ways to picture queer life, these students demonstrate that history is not static—it is living, evolving, and shaped by those who dare to see the world differently.
Towards a Queer Historiography
Towards a Queer Historiography showcases how community partnerships can preserve LGBTQIA+ history while empowering new generations of artists and thinkers. Lambda Archives provides the historical foundation; San Diego City College fosters academic and creative exploration; and Art of Pride amplifies queer artists with a platform rooted in justice, representation, and celebration.
Together, these institutions demonstrate that telling queer history is both an act of remembrance and an act of creation. It honors those who came before us while giving today’s artists the tools to envision a future where LGBTQIA+ stories are fully seen.
As Art of Pride continues to grow, collaborations like this affirm the program’s longstanding purpose: to uplift LGBTQIA+ art, empower artists, and strengthen the cultural fabric of our community—one story, one image, one artist at a time.