ZEREN BADAR PHOTOGRAPHY

During the summer of 1976, a restaurant in Fire Island Pines, New York, denied entry to a visitor in drag named Terry Warren. Fire Island Pines is a beach community on Fire Island east of New York City with a gay majority population that was at the time more conservative than the population of nearby Cherry Grove. When Warren's friends in Cherry Grove heard what had happened, they too dressed up in drag, and, on July 4, 1976. They sailed to the Pines by ferry. The boatload of drag queens that stormed into the Pines that day to a surprised but exuberant welcome was the first "invasion," an event now repeated each year.

This summer was 35th anniversary of INVASION. I loved the energy of the event. Gays, lesbians, drag queens, straights, young & old people got together for couple of hours and showed each other friendship, tolerance and love. All of these feelings created emotional link with subjects.

Space was extremely crowded. Getting so close to subject allowed me to create compressed style to emphasize the claustrophobic feeling on my photographs. Wide lens (16mm) exaggerated the forms which shows influence from German- Expressionism. Unusual cropping/framing of photographs permit viewers use their imaginations.

Venue photographs were taken has burned down to ground recently This tragic event made images historic,

This project "Invasion" was featured on two prominent photography blogs--- aCruator & La Lettre de la Photographie.

http://lalettredelaphotographie.com/entries/3913/ http://www.acurator.com/blog/2011/07/zeren-badar-invasion.html