Frank O'Hara by Sophie Heawood

"I don’t know if it explains why I’ve never fallen in love or why I fall in love every single day, but there’s this poem that implanted itself in my brain when I was young, and until I reach the sort of love it describes I don’t think I’ll be satisfied..."

Illustration by Fernando Monroy

INTERVIEW: Theo Adams

Theo Adams is creative director and founder of a collective of performers creating some of the most mind blowing, exhilarating, and moving performances imaginable. 

Illustration by Fernando Monroy based on an image by Nick Knight

Pepper LaBeija by George M Johnson

'Quiet as it has been kept, the LGBTQ movement has been ongoing for nearly 100 years. Often left out of the history, many of the leaders of our past including James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Duke Ellington identified across the sex and gender spectrum; these narratives only discussed long after the heights of their careers.'

Illustration by Constantin Prozorov

Vanessa Bell by Richard Dodwell

Digital artist Richard Dodwell explores his complex relationship with the work of painter, and sister of Virginia Woolf, Vannessa Bell: 'I suppose I first encountered Vanessa on one of those grey, windy afternoons when one is skint and finds themselves walking around a large national art gallery...'

Illustration by Elena Durey.

Prince by George M Johnson

'The day he died, I went through emotions I had never felt before. I recall calling my Aunt whose favorite artist was Prince. We were talking and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I began crying uncontrollably and said, “He was the first person I remember being just like me and now he’s gone.” '

Illustration by Elena Durey.

INTERVIEW: Soko

'There's nothing more that i find more sad in a way, than people not living their full truth or not trying to explore what their truth is and how they could make themselves happier if they were not being so hard on themselves and trying to look like the kardashians.'

Illustration by Elena Durey.

Derek Jarman by Richard Dodwell

'I first encountered Derek in his garden. It was a glossy photo book with images of marine plants and strange, contorted metal sculptures sticking out of the shingle at violent angles, some with witch stones hooked around their jagged ends, like strange mementos that a ghost from the sea had left.'

Illustration by Elena Durey.

Karamo Brown by Timothy DuWhite

'To know things beforehand is the antithesis of being gay, after all. We never know anything ahead of time. Our own sexuality is just something we eventually discover then come-out with, and our heterosexual friends/family members tell us about how they, “already knew.”'

Illustration by Sam Russell Walker.