For generations, queer people in the South have fought to carve out spaces of care, resilience, and belonging, despite the violence and erasure that they were often met with. I Used to Think I Had Been Relieved of Desire explores this enduring history through personal and collective narratives from the radical sanctuaries envisioned by the Wanda and Brenda Henson in Mississippi and the Women’s Commune of Belton Texas, to the quiet, everyday acts of care among my great-aunt Nook and her chosen family in Birmingham, Alabama.

The atmospheric photographs allude to what has been lost and found again, challenging the misconception that queerness and the South are inherently at odds. Instead, they reveal how the repellent and the idyllic can exist and be closely contained within a single landscape.