Thomas Allen Harris revisits his vast personal archive of 1980s black and white photography after 40 years. He closely narrates his experiences with the queer community of folks from Curacao, Suriname, and Indonesia in Amsterdam and Paris who welcomed and nurtured him as he documented them in their homes, places of work, dance studios, cafes, and nightclubs.

While employing his visual and storytelling methodology, Harris uses his archive of personal photography to meditate on queer identity in nascent European immigrant communities in the early 1980s, thus uncovering hidden queer histories and exposing the relationship between the personal, political, and artistic. The themes of community-formation and Black, diasporic, and queer identities depicted in these images anticipate the central concepts of Harris’ later films as well as his work in Family Pictures Institute for Inclusive Storytelling.