Breathing Archive

Jamie James’s photographic archive of Sydney’s radical queer culture in the last decade of the millennium is a profound body of work delighting in a world of performance artists, kinky clubbers, risk and vibrant self-expression.  

Developed with performer and dramaturg Victoria Spence, an expert creative team, and featuring a soundscape by DJ Gemma, Breathing Archive travels back to the 1990s and early 2000s, when James began photographing the city’s queer performance culture and the extraordinary people inhabiting those worlds. 

More than 700 analogue photographs become the raw material for a live work traversing a vivid, unruly and unforgettable era in the city’s history. Images flicker, stories surface and memories collide as the archive moves between projection, narration, sound and movement. 

Far from being a static trip down memory lane, this funny, confronting and tender experience weaves between snapshots of private worlds and spectacular performance. There is friendship, freedom, grief and loss. And there are the voices of people who were there. Return to a provocative and unflinchingly creative time in Sydney’s queer history – alive, unrestrained and breathing hard.