Lola Flash, Dominique, Brooklyn, 2011

For Lola Flash, art and activism are intertwined: photographs are visibility, visibility is power, and power is legacy. As a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and as a PoC, Flash has spent three decades creating life-scale portraits of real life people who have struggled, fought and overcome. Flash started out in the late 1980s as the Aids crisis was hitting her community hard; she was there to document the work of Act Up a group taking direct action to end the pandemic. Flash’s work can be seen at Autograph ABP until 17 August—her first ever solo exhibition in the UK.