thems. photo exhibit
thems. - 2024 to now - Phoenix, AZ
Community Event
Role: Event Manager + Creative Director + Curator
This series is a community-led annual showcase featuring the work of 15+ local, national, and international queer photographers. Held each June for Pride Month, it provides a rare and affirming space in Phoenix for queer artists to exhibit their work, build community, and celebrate visual storytelling by and for the LGBTQ+ community.
Presented in partnership with Afternoons Studio—a local photography studio and community space—each year’s opening day includes photo booths, panel discussions, and space for connection and dialogue. At a time when grassroots, queer-led programming is increasingly rare, the Queer Photo Exhibit offers a vital space of belonging, creativity, and collective care.
Past sponsors and partners include Lookout Phoenix, Wilson Camera, Strap Photolab, Harlem Coffee, and Local Matriarch.
Life Without Pain, Love Without Fear
2025’s exhibit featured 15 queer artists from across the U.S. and Mexico, exploring themes of migration within the queer community. Through powerful photography, Life Without Pain, Love Without Fear highlighted personal, intergenerational, and communal stories of movement, displacement, and transformation.
The exhibit opened with a hands-on photography and collage workshop led by Omar Soto, in collaboration with thems. and CALA Alliance. Participants were invited to reinterpret classical art through the lens of their modern lives—using props, collage, and visual storytelling to insert themselves into the frame and reclaim space in the narrative.
Sponsored by Lookout Phoenix, this year’s exhibit invited the community to reflect on the resilience and complexity of queer identity shaped by migration—past and present.
