Interview - 'Rainbow Revolution' - Magnus Hastings

Magnus Hastings, welcome my love. We are thrilled to be talking to you about your new book ‘Rainbow Revolution’ but before we get to that…

What got you into photography?
I always photography. I grew up watching my dad developing pictures in his dark room .. he was semi professional but it wasn’t his career .. he always took portraits as do I and I was fascinated watching the images appear in the trays as he developed them.. so later on I basically taught myself and I went to Chelsea art school though it didn’t become my career until much later on , as I wanted to act and went to Guildhall to study Acting after art school . Though I absolutely have no interest in acting now it still influences my work as its filled with drama!

What made you want to shoot the queer community?
Because it’s my community and the people within it inspire me . I absolutely love being queer and wouldn’t change it for anything.

Also the last few years have been a huge time of change within the community and I wanted to celebrate that and investigate it.

What made you want to start the #gayface campaign?
Well I had been in a kind of limbo since my last book Why Drag had come out working a lot but I am happiest when I have a project of my own to work on.. so I sat myself down and came up with a plan.. frustrated with the miserable direction the USA and indeed the world seemed to be taking I wanted to create a very visible project that showcased the whole expanding queer community not just drag, which I was known for ,but every one on the queer spectrum.. I thought about giving people a blank canvas to create what they wanted .. to express themselves and tell their stories.. I wanted to use social media as a platform to get the images out there so thought about the most social media friendly format.. a square.. so what about a box.. a mini piece of theatre .. a white box would bounce light in a beautiful way and also be the perfect blank canvas and so the #gayface project was born.

What made you pick Drag Race superstar Alaska to be your first subject?
Well Alaska and I work together extensively and she is so incredibly creative and smart I knew she would take the time to come up something interesting and not just go through the motions , which she did. Plus it was then extremely helpful to have an example picture of Alaska when approaching other people as she gave the project instant credibility and helped to enlist people I wanted.

How did you go about selecting who to shoot afterwards?
I just would think about representation and who would be interesting visually .. I mean the project has people from all walks of life and represents a broad spectrum but its definitely creative person heavy as I had to think about images you wanted to return to, not just look at once and acknowledge. I also had to be ruthless cutting out drag queens as I had so many, as it’s my world, and I would always be throwing some queen or other into the box, lol. But it became exciting to really delve into the LGBTQ+ world and meet some wonderful and interesting people and learn a thing or too along the way..

How many photographs did you take for the project?
Oh god I took over 1000.. I lived with a box in my L.A. home/studio for 2 years so was constantly coming up with ideas and shooting them. I also built boxes in London, san Francisco and New York, taking trips to all severalties and lining up shoots before I arrived. I evn took a box to Drag Con .. which was chaos!

What made you want to turn the series into a book?
It was always my plan to turn it into a book and that was always in my mind when shooting.. people kept asking if I was going to do another Drag book to follow Why Drag? But I wanted o create something that was very different but obviously still felt like me .. had my signature style but was a new direction. Adding the text to the book; essays from a selection of very diverse queer people, totally elevates the book for me and gives insight into the oftentimes confusing, for some, world of gender and sexual identity in a human and interesting way

How did you go about selecting the images for the book?
That was so incredibly hard. I printed out all of my possibles and then for 10 weeks lived with them stuck all over my walls .. I would wake up in the night and move images around.. remember it wasn’t just what images I used but which image sat next to another and if they worked together and the space created between them as some pages have four images on them and sometimes those four sit next to a solo image and sometimes next two four others .. it was never ending. I had to cut some images loved ad also made sure that the small images were as important as the bigger ones… It was emotional … but as I said 10 weeks of torture and I got it feeling perfect to me.

Do you see the series continuing?
No I think it’s played out .. I need to move on for my sanity.. I mean if we weren’t in the middle of this endless Pandemic and I was having in person launches and signings then maybe the box would make an appearance but as it stands I think its done.

Any last shout outs?
Just to thank all the amazing people who turned up and shared their vision and creativity with me .