Michael Foley said of this photo: “If you look closely at this hat, you can see that it’s a bit wonky. That hat, along with its ten compatriots, was never meant for the close scrutiny of an exhibition. Sitting in my front room in the summer of 2001 with aerosol paint, PVA glue, and upholstery foam from a shop in Capel Street, I wasn’t thinking about posterity. I was wondering if the hats would stay together if it rained, and would the sweaty heads of my pals on Gay Switchboard Dublin make the paint run. The smell of the iron-transfers on the tee shirts, along with the aerosol and glue was like a biohazard. It was the smell of Pride in our house. I don’t mind that wonkiness; in fact, I quite like it. When you grow up thinking that there’s something wrong with you, you become suspicious of ‘perfect’ and wary of ‘normal’. Pride, for me, was to finally say that I was happy with my own faultiness. I didn’t mind it. I was actually proud of it. And I don’t think that Christopher minded it either. He liked his pictures to be perfect, but he never needed his subjects to be”.

Exhibited as part of ‘Living with Pride: photographs by Christopher Robson’, June-November 2021 at the National Photographic Archive

Physical description: 1 photograph : dye coupler transparency ; 35 mm.