1 h, oct 7, 2020 y - INTERVIEW MAG iO Tillett Wright Examines Queerness in Today’s America

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iO Tillett Wright and King Princess
Examine Queerness in Today’s America

By King Princess

When, in 2018, iO Tillett Wright arrived to take my picture for his staggering new book, Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America, a project he started in 2010 against the backdrop of Prop 8, he texted me to come downstairs. I met him outside my office on the street, where he was already busy setting up a black scrim. “Put this on,” he said, tossing me a T-shirt with the name of the project printed across the front. He’d come from shooting someone else, and was in a rush to catch a flight from New York back to the home he was essentially building with his own hands in Joshua Tree, California. Like a Fitzgerald or Hemingway character, or, perhaps more accurately, like a charismatic mashup of all the great literary hustlers, Tillett Wright can whirlpool into any room—always determined, always passionate, always ready—and leave behind him a wake of breathless excitement. In each of his many creative endeavors—not least among them his hit memoir (Darling Days, 2016) and podcast (The Ballad of Billy Balls, 2019)—Tillett Wright uses the adversity he has known as his power, channeling his own pain into a rallying cry for those whose voices seldom get heard. With Self Evident Truths, out now through Prestel, he has done it again, shining a light of solidarity on the queer community while also squinting at it, calling into question its very nature. Tillett Wright recently got on the phone with his friend, the musician King Princess, whom he met, fittingly, when he rolled up, presumably in a rush, to take her picture. —NICK HARAMIS

KING PRINCESS: iO, I did not prepare anything.

IO TILLETT WRIGHT: What do you even need to prepare to talk to me?

PRINCESS: I don’t know. I’m in Interview magazine as an interviewer and I assume most interviewers have questions. I don’t have any questions, but I do want to talk about your photo project.

TILLETT WRIGHT: What do you know about it?

PRINCESS: Well, I know that when we first met, you rolled up to my apartment and you had your little camera, and we sat in my courtyard. I had worked with your partner [the hairstylist Rachel Lee], right? So I knew of you, and I’d seen you on Catfish.

TILLETT WRIGHT: Oh, gosh.

PRINCESS: You rolled up to my apartment and you were like, “Yo, I’m going to take a photo of you for this thing.” I didn’t really know what it was. Then you explained it to me. I was like, “That is so many photos that have been taken of queer individuals, it may be the most ever in one consolidated book.” I think you may have set the Guinness World Record for most queers in one book.

TILLETT WRIGHT: I think it’s actually the most photos of any single group of people in history. I think this might finally be my moment to get in the Guinness. I think this might be it.

PRINCESS: You know, when you’re a young gay person, or queer person, or anything in between, you can’t go to a school library and be like, “Gay. Where’s the gay?” Do you know what I mean?

TILLETT WRIGHT: Now you can. Now there’s a 600-pound brick that you can check out of the library and see 10,000 of your family members.

[continues in the links below]

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