The Queerettes

"The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Queer History worldwide. Housed at The University of Minnesota it holds 3500 linear feet of material, in 58 languages. The photo series captures the elegant beauty of books, animating them and bringing the pages to life. Through the photographs the long suppressed and actively erased history of the community can be understood through a unique path.

Art is a powerful tool for social action and engagement, and my work often has a political tone.
As my wife and I celebrate our tenth year of legal marriage the radical importance of our marriage shocks me. We marriage out of love and protest, boldly denying those who want to erase us the opportunity. As many countries around the world move toward autocracy including the country of my family, Italy attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights increase. The assault against the trans community politically, legally, and socially is a sad turn of events. In May of 1933 when Nazi youth ransacked The Institute for Sexual Studies in Berlin, destroyed research, and burned books they also beat to death trans woman Dora Richter.

As a woman, a lesbian, and a human I must use my work to illuminate, educate and inform. One way the dominant culture subjugates the minority is by erasing their history. Worldwide the Queer History has been erased, attacked, repressed, and outright banished into non-existence.
The Hidden Life of Books: Chapter III documents in photographs our existence."

Laura Migliorino

The Hidden Life of Books Chapter III The Tretter Project: Queer History.