I chose to photograph a product I always have in my house: Bragg’s nutritional yeast. This is something I grew up eating on buttered popcorn, probably because I grew up in Mendocino, California, where everyone ate health food before it was cool. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that a lot of the things I grew up with, from Tofu Pups to Birkenstocks to Subaru Outbacks, were also characteristic of 1990s queer culture, and it was even later than that when I realized I was also queer. I introduced my partner to “nooch” on popcorn when we first started dating, and it’s a movie night staple for us–as it is for many other folks we know.
My photo is dimly blue-lit to create a cozy nighttime movie night mood. In addition to a bowl of popcorn, I pulled some of our gayest DVDs from the shelf to build out the scene. In the back is a couple (my partner and I) watching a movie, accompanied by a cat (cats are also gay).
As I was thought about this concept, I was also thinking of the long history of coded messaging to LGBTQ+ audiences in advertising. Here’s a little more reading on that topic.