journal of digital research & publishing - The Sydney eScholarship ...

1 P M J O U R N A L O F D I G I T A L R ESEARCH & P UBLISHING
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Queer Subculture on TheNight­
Bloomers.com
Ron O’Berst
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
Abstract
This article discusses the representation of glamour on TheNightBloomers.com, a photography
site which depicts the queer subculture of Barcelona. The article discusses glamour as a mainstream
construct used by traditional forms of print and screen media to sell heteronormative, capitalist ideals to
a mass audience. It discusses the way in which TheNightBloomers.com, along with other forms of
new media, debase and re­contextualise notions of glamour, allowing users to reinterpret the construct
in a way that is personally meaningful. The article looks at what happens to our notion of glamour, a
construct based on mystique, when one is able to destabilise the premise on which it has evolved. It makes
a suggestion that such previously hierarchical constructs are changed beyond their original meaning and
makes suggestions for what this could mean for the way we create meaning from constructs in the context
of the “bricolage” form of new media.
Keywords
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Its 2am in Barcelona and down a small alleyway in the barrio of Raval ­ an area of the city
famed as much for its transvestite prostitute locals as it is for its hedonistic drinking dens
­ young, attractive twenty­somethings cram into bar Plastico to dance, drink and socialise
with other members of the city’s lively queer subculture. A group of young, Catalan
photography students capture the nightlife of this subculture, depicting the participants on
their website TheNightBloomers.com (TNB). The photographers who run the site portray
the members of the Catalonian capital’s queer culture in images that suggest theatricality,
beauty, allure, a seductive air of opulence and, perhaps most importantly, mystique.
Such aesthetic traits, as argued by Stephen Gundle, make the basis of our modern day
construction of glamour (Gundle 2008). As this article argues; glamour, as a construct
that has traditionally served mainstream, heteronormative audiences, is repurposed and
recontextualised by and for a queer audience on TNB. TNB plays with notions of glamour
to the extent that its meaning is deconstructed and debased from its traditional use in
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