Queer moments: TMC interviews photographer Christa Holka

by Lemon Tart

Christa Holka, 35, is a London-based photographer whose work focuses on the queer community. Big Smoke readers may have spotted her snapping away at London’s east end queer nights, or eating some strada (more on that later). Based in Lower Clapton, she’s just finished her MA in Fine Art at Central St. Martins. Before that, she did a BFA in Photography at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois – and even before that she did a BA in Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She’s a talented lass. You may have seen some of her images on TMC.

The Most Cake caught up with her…

Christa Holka

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Where did you grow up, and how long have you lived in London?

This is always such a difficult question! I grew up partly in upstate New York, partly in Southern California, but say I am from Chicago cause I lived there for 8 years before moving to London. I’ve lived in London for almost two years now.

When were you first inspired to be a photographer?

When I first moved to Chicago in 1999, I didn’t know many people, so I would often go to parties, events, etc. with my camera and just photograph everyone/everything around me. I guess it was my way of being social without being social? Over the years that’s definitely changed; I’ve found a really good balance of observing and interacting all at once. Still, though, I can tell that whenever I’m not taking lots of pictures, I must really be “in it” like too in it to photograph it.

How does being gay influence your photography?

Well, it influences it a lot, actually. Most of my work is about the people and places around me: the things I do, the people I see, all of that is very much involved in my work. When I first started making work seriously, I was involved in a drag king performance troupe (The Chicago Kings) so during that time, as you can see especially in my most of my major projects (“Red/White/Blue…”, “Drag” and “Poker?” and even “Boys will be…”), genderqueerness was a big issue. Most of my friends at the time were in the troupe and were often my willing models. Over time, that changed – our troupe ended, I stopped doing drag, but still my ideas about my own gender and the gender of the people around me was always about gender as something more fluid, something not just male or female, something not existing on that binary system. And that, well, that is all about being queer and living a queer life. So yeah, being gay/queer is pretty much always involved in my work.

What are you up to at the moment photographically?

At the moment, I’ve been doing what I’ve done since I started making photographs, and what I’ll probably do forever: photographing the people and places around me via documentary-style snapshots – a sort of document of my queer life. At this stage, I have an arsenal of about 40,000 images, which I’ve been doing since 2005 and even before. For my MA show at St. Martins, I took a selection of these images and made them into an approximately four-minute video inspired by Chris Marker’s La Jetée, composed of original digital photographs, appropriated internet images, found sound and pop music. I’m starting work on another video — something similar, using some of my many documentary images, but also I’d like to work on another project that I direct.

A selection of images from the arsenal of 40,000…

2006

2005

2005

2006

2005

2009

Over the last year and a half, I’ve also been doing a lot of documenting of live art in London. There has always been a performative aspect to my photographs whether they are the documentary snapshots or the directed narratives. I have been involved with live art as a performer or observer for several years. I’m really interested in the practice of documenting live art, interested in the thing live art becomes in a photograph. It really feels like a natural extension of my own practice. I also have been doing stills on films. I think that both live art and film very much influence and inform the photographs I make.…

Tell me more about the series “Poker?”, how did that come about?

I made “Poker?” in 2004, just after the first anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term as President. I went to his farce of an inauguration parade in Washington, D.C., to protest, attended several anti-war protests in Chicago and basically couldn’t think about anything but the injustice of George W. Bush. During this time, Bush and company (especially Vice President Cheney and the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) were just spewing all this rhetoric, all this nonsense to justify committing mass murder of thousands and thousands of innocent people and all I could think every time I heard his voice was that he sounded like an immature child playing some kind of game that turns into a fight. So, I made a set in my basement, which was meant to be like a war room-looking secret place where these white dudes with too much power get together and end up in a fight. So, I got some friends of mine who were drag king performers (it was also during that time that I performed with The Chicago Kings) and had them perform this silly Poker game that turns violent with the world hanging in the background.

from “Poker”, 2004

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“Red/white/blue/bar/diner/hotel” is amazing… tell us more about shooting that.

Hey thanks! It was again a reaction to George W. Bush. I made “Red/White/Blue…” just after 9/11 in 2001. Again, it was this time of massive misguided American patriotism that was just so upsetting to me. Slogans like “These colors don’t lie!” and “Let’s Smoke ‘Em Out!” were everywhere – even in a large metropolitan city like Chicago, places were just rife with American flags and bumper stickers with stuff like that. I was so disgusted. Oh my god I’m so glad that is over! Anyways, I wanted to create this gross scenario of excess and recklessness that said something about the behaviour of the United States (the Red, White and Blue). I made it about these jerks who go on this night out – they pick up some girls in a bar, take them to a hot dog stand and end up in a sleezy motel where they pay for sex. Looking back at that work, though, I think that my using sex and sex work as the thing to communicate disgust is very problematic. I made that work very early on and regret not thinking through these issues as well as I could have. But, you know, what’s done is done and I’m still always interested to hear what other people think about it. I hope my original intention still comes through in some way.

from “Red/white/blue/bar/diner/hotel”, 2002

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“Boys will be…”, can you explain what that’s about?

I made “Boys will be….” while living in Chicago. It’s a lot about my friends and I at the time. I refer to the people in these photographs as “boys” because even though they are in their 20s and 30s, their playful nature and their curious spirit resonated with me as that of an adolescent boy. Adolescence is a complicated time, growing and changing into adulthood, but it is also a time of angst and awkwardness and struggle. While still awkward, curious and angsty, this “second adolescence” was still playful, new and unsure but this time it was more informed, more confident and definitely not as full of pain. I wanted to capture this uncertainty of finally being “ok” with being comfortable. I wanted to show off these friends looking good, feeling powerful.

from “Boys will be…”, 2006

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Which other photographers inspire your work?

Nan Goldin is the reason I ever thought I could seriously consider ever becoming a photographer. After her, I am inspired by: Claude Cahun, Philip Lorca di Corcia, Tina Barney, Larry Clarke, Brian Finke, Wolfgang Tillmans, Dash Snow, Martin Parr, Guy Bourdin, Nikki S. Lee, Larry Sultan, gosh I could go on and on.

You’ve done a lot of film stills work, what do you find interesting about this kind of work?

I’ve always loved movies and I suppose I really wanted to make films but figured out early on that I wanted the image to stop – I wanted to sit and stare at this one frame. My earliest project, “Red/White/Blue…” has a very cinematic feel to it – same with “Poker?” and I suppose with a lot of what I do have cinematic elements; I like motion, but I like the challenge of capturing motion in a single frame even more. I also have a lot of filmmaker friends and I started helping them with their films years ago. I came to really love the whole process of making a film – the director bringing a big crew of super-talented people together and everyone working on this thing that is a big mass of images put together in time and space. On a more specific level, when it comes to stills, I really enjoy the problem-solving that goes along with getting the image the director wants, the one that the director of photography is making and trying to capture the feel of the film.

And finally, if you could be any kind of cake, what cake would you want to be?

Hmmm. Weirdly, I don’t really like cake, well, you know like cake cake. So it’d have to be some kind of savory cake, like maybe more of a Strada? That’s not a cake, I know, but…

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You can see more of Christa’s work here: http://www.christaholka.com/