Phyllis Christopher is a photographer who lives in England where she conducts workshops, co-facilitates a community darkroom at the NewBridge project, and continues to document the LGBTQ+ community. Her book, Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2002, was published by Book Works in 2022.

Phyllis Christopher’s body of work documenting lesbian visibility, sexuality and protest, Dark Room: San Francisco Sex and Protest, 1988-2002, was published by Book Works in 2022. Her work had previously been published in Nothing But The Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image (co-edited by Susie Bright and Jill Posener), Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age (edited by David Steinberg), Art & Queer Culture (co-edited by Catherine Lord and Richard Meyer) and Aperture Magazine.

Christopher is the former photo editor On Our Backs magazine. In 2005, she released the DVD  ‘Sextrospective: A Decade with San Francisco’s Sexiest Lesbians’ – a collection of 280 photographs documenting the lesbian sexual revolution of the 1990’s. She has been featured on HBO’s ‘Sexbites’, Canadian television’s ‘Sex TV and the documentary film, ‘Erotica – A Journey into Female Sexuality.

In January 2017, her work was featured in the retrospective: ‘On Our Backs: An Archive’, at The NewBridge Project Gallery, Newcastle, and in 2019 at Nottingham Contemporary in the group show ‘Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resitance’. She is a 2020 finalist of Queer|Art’s, Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers. In 2021 her work was the subject of a major retrospective organised between BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, and Grand Union, Birmingham.

Skills & Experience

  • Documentation: photography
  • Technical: photographic / moving image
  • Visiting lecturer (FE)
  • Visiting lecturer (HE)
  • Workshops (family / general)
  • Workshsops (adult)