‘You’ve got to be pretty tough to be a drag queen out there’: Damien Frost’s immaculate queer portraits

The photographer’s photos are so meticulously staged that viewers often assume they were taken in a studio – not behind a London nightclub or in an Australian goat field One bright spring day, the photographer Damien Frost arrived at a farm in Gungal, outside Muswellbrook, New So

The photographer’s photos are so meticulously staged that viewers often assume they were taken in a studio – not behind a London nightclub or in an Australian goat field One bright spring day, the photographer Damien Frost arrived at a farm in Gungal, outside Muswellbrook, New South Wales. Goats grazed in a paddock, eucalyptus trees stretched into the brilliant blue sky and a tin shed weathered in the sun. Frost walked into the shed and entered another world.

“It’s a drag studio,” says Frost. Lining the walls were dozens of wigs and rails of flamboyant outfits belonging to Beverly Fabulosity. “I’ve never seen anything like it.

It was a very Priscilla scenario.” Frost grew up in Australia and is now based in London, where for more than a decade he has photographed drag queens and club kids for his acclaimed Night Flowers series. Since late August, he has been back in his home country, commissioned by Newcastle’s New Annual festival to photograph night owls in and around the city. These new portraits are being exhibited alongside a selection from Frost’s archive at Watt Space gallery as part of the festival.

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