Trust Me

In November 1990, Lola Flash’s friend Ray Navarro, a fellow artist and ACT UP activist, died from complications related to AIDS at the age of twenty-six. A few months later, on an early morning walk along the beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Flash encountered an abandoned wheelchair, interpreting it as a sign from Ray, that he was present on the beach. This work is an example of Flash’s signature “cross-color” technique, which they developed in the late 1980s by printing images shot with slide film onto negative photo paper to achieve a dazzling reversal of light and dark, and of warm and cool colors. This transformation helped preserve the anonymity of their subjects, most of whom were queer people of color. The cross-color photographs offer visions of a world in which queer sociality, love, and joy are celebrated and protected, while also making space for anger, grief, and remembrance.