Sterling is a forthcoming photobook by Tennessee-based visual artist Benjy Russell, exploring the complexities of queer love, grief, desire and survival in the rural American South.

Beginning with Russell's relationship with his late husband Sterling, who died from an AIDS-related illness, the project moves through intimacy, memory and loss, considering what it means to continue living and loving after the death of a partner. Through experimental analogue photography, Russell creates a deeply personal account of queer rural life, as he navigates grief, desire, loss and the possibility of renewal.

Sterling is a story about love. Departing from a deeply personal story, it connects into the collective experience of loving and losing someone. It also contributes to a larger conversation about the visibility of queer experiences in rural America, the enduring impact of HIV/AIDS, the health crisis, and the importance of preserving personal histories that are too often overlooked in dominant cultural narratives.

Queer histories are not only found in major cities, institutions or established archives. They also exist in rural communities, domestic spaces, intimate relationships and the personal collections of those who lived them.

Through Sterling, we hope to contribute to the preservation and visibility of these experiences, bringing an intensely personal story into a wider cultural conversation about love, identity, belonging and survival.

We believe photography has a major role to play in this process. Beyond its artistic value, a photobook can become a lasting document, a source of research and a means through which experiences can be encountered, shared and understood by future generations.

Sterling will be published by Terrible Baby, an independent photography publisher based in Tennessee, with publication planned for May 2027.

Our editorial approach is grounded in the belief that photobooks should be more than beautiful objects. We aim to create publications that function as enduring cultural and research resources, prioritizing artistic voices and subjects whose significance cannot be measured by commercial potential alone.

Working collaboratively with visual Benjy Russell, we are developing a publication that remains faithful to the complexity of his practice while making the work accessible to audiences beyond the specialized photography community.


About Benjy Russell

Benjy Russell is a self-taught, multidisciplinary queer artist, working across photography, sculpture, set design, and ecological art. A citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, he was raised in Lindsay, OK., a small rural sundown town on the Chickasaw Reservation. For the past 17 years, Russell has lived in rural Tennessee within an intentional queer community. His practice is informed by Choctaw tradition, the natural world, science fiction and lived experience. Working in collaboration with the landscape and natural cycles, and using in-camera effects and found materials, his work unfolds through rich layers of color and compositions that shift and challenge our perception of the world. Creating magical scenes, Russell's photographs create impossible worlds, merging fiction and reality, to explore themes of love, loss, identity, queerness and rural life.
 

Independent publishing requires considerable investment in artistic development, editing, design, printing and distribution. Projects addressing underrepresented experiences can face particular challenges in securing the financial support necessary to bring them into public circulation.

Contributions to this campaign will support the development, production and dissemination of Sterling, helping us bring the project to fruition without compromising its artistic integrity.

We also hope to extend the publication's reach through outreach to libraries, archives, educational institutions and organisations working with LGBTQ+ histories and communities, allowing the work to contribute to research, education and public dialogue.

By supporting Sterling, you are helping preserve an intimate account of queer life in the American South and ensuring that stories such as these have a place in our collective cultural memory.