Strike a Pose, Forever: The Legacy of Vogue and its Re-contextualization in Contemporary Camp Performances

Abstract

Born from the subcultural nightlife of the 1960s New York, vogue has been in symbiosis with the gay Latino and African American ballroom scene. Due to its popularization in the 1990s, mainly through Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1990) and Madonna’s “Vogue” (1990), the practice of voguing and the scene have moved from the invisible margins to a mainstream site of visibility and have been established as a celebrated tradition in LGBT communities worldwide. By employing a poetics of camp, voguing constantly challenges traditional understandings of gender. In this context, this article examines the re-contextualization of voguing in parallel with vogue’s contemporary gay camp politics.