For over three years, I've been documenting a queer night in a small pub with low ceilings and a stage barely big enough for two. What draws me back, month after month, isn't just the show - it's the quiet radicalism of people existing without apology in a space that holds them as they are.

These photographs are about proximity and permission. In a room where bodies compress into available space, where intimacy is structural rather than designed, I watch people negotiate closeness, joy, belonging.

Every queer space carries ghosts. We bring the versions of ourselves we had to hide, the losses we carry, the weight of generations who fought for our right to these ordinary evenings. But we also bring their defiance. When I photograph someone in this room, I'm documenting not just their presence but everyone who made that presence possible.

This work isn't about representation or visibility in the ways those terms are usually deployed. It's evidence. Proof that we showed up with our damage and our desire and made something necessary: a place where contradiction isn't a problem to solve, where you can be uncertain and still belong, where mattering doesn't require perfection, only presence.

I photograph what refuses to be polite. What I've learned: community isn't beautiful - it's essential. And in small rooms like this one, we make ourselves vast.