The Wildcrafting Our Queerness ProjectMain MenuThe Wildcrafting Our Queerness ProjectMain PageArtExplore the art of queer AppalachiansTheory BlogSome major theories grounding queer Appalachian artQueer Appalachian Reading ListResources for further learningAboutLearn more about the project, oral histories, and the project's creator, Maxwell CloeMaxwell Cloed8840c620fc20aeee2b1f40a1e54c0e3967fa30d
1media/headshot.jpg2022-09-19T19:13:45+00:00Carmelo Amenta12Photographer from Ohiostructured_gallery2022-10-19T15:31:12+00:00Carmelo Amenta is a photographer and professor from Toledo, Ohio, currently working out of Columbus. Pulling from his experiences with queerness, masculinity, and LGBTQ+ visual history, Amenta has amassed a (quite often literal) body of art that both startles and entices. Central to his work is the physical bodies of gay men, most notably himself, and the ways that these bodies rub up against each other in Appalachian forests, at home, in queer archives, and across history. His artistic practice frequently employs digital and physical collage techniques, archival methodologies, and life-size reproductions of human figures. In all the photographs he makes, Amenta compels us to think about our own physical bodies and the myriad ways they mingle with other entities - physical and ideological.
Amenta's body of work is available on his website.
Click the title of each piece to view the full image and listen, when available, to an audio recording of Carmelo Amenta describing his inspiration and process behind the work of art.
