CLUB (ongoing)

Shot entirely on 35mm film, Jock Thomson’s club photography documents queer nightlife from within the communities that create it. Moving through dancefloors, basements, back rooms and afterparties, his photographs capture the characters and encounters that make these temporary spaces feel alive.

Drag performers, club kids, kink and fetish communities, lovers, friends and strangers become the subjects of intimate, flash-lit portraits. Thomson is drawn equally to spectacle and tenderness: elaborate looks and manufactured personas sit alongside sweat, touch, desire and fleeting moments of connection. His photographs embrace the theatricality and excess of queer nightlife while remaining attentive to the relationships that form within it.

Rather than approaching the club as an outsider, Thomson photographs as an active participant in queer nightlife. Shot quickly and instinctively, his images preserve the messiness, humour and sensuality of the night, creating an ongoing analogue archive of queer people, parties and the spaces they temporarily make their own.

Thomson has photographed parties in Glasgow and beyond, including DRIP, Ponyboy, Scandal, Hot Mess, Torture Garden, Bratklub, Noise Complaint!, Glastar and QIWA.