In 2017, photographer Jane Duong and producer Victoria Firth-Smith created the photographic series Queerberra to document the lives of Canberra’s LGBTQIA+ community during the national postal vote on marriage equality—one of the most charged moments in Australian queer history.

They invited LGBTQIA+ people to be witnessed as precious and powerful. Each person came as they were and chose a place of significance to them. Seen together, they revealed a city understood not through its monuments but through the lived geographies of those who move within it.

These portraits chart a map of queer belonging, showing how affirmation is found and made. Each image is a threshold between private and public, between tenderness and risk. During the postal survey, the result was unknown, but one truth held: we matter. The Queerberra book launched at the East Hotel in Kingston the day after Canberra recorded the nation’s strongest ‘Yes’ vote, marking a moment of relief, recognition, and renewed resolve.

Since then, Canberra has continued to be shaped by queer presence, resilience, and care. This work acknowledges losses and honours what has been created. Every gesture of love leaves its trace on a place; each act of showing up changes the city that receives it.

Queerberra brings together 100 portraits of allies, asexual, bisexual, cisgender, drag kings and queens, fluid, gay, gender non-conforming, intersex, lesbian, monogamous, pansexual, polyamorous, transgender, queer, questioning, and rainbow people.

Eight years since the book’s publication, this exhibition revisits the series to honour the LGBTQIA+ community’s ongoing fight for equality, recognition, and love.