Julie Rae Powers

Julie Rae Powers

Once More, Gently

Hardcover
8.5” x 11”
64 pages
Self published

From the artist:

A longing gaze
Soft first kisses
Crocodile tears
Chasing sunsets

A chronicle & a celebration.

Once More, Gently is a narrative of a second queer adolescence. It is the antithesis to popular media depictions of queer pain and tragedy. It is a savoring of joy, nostalgia, grief, and love; an honoring of the “in between” moments. A placeholder for a specific moment in time. Once More, Gently finds home in place and in people of our choosing.

Book review by Kelsey Sucena |

“If the world must burn, let there be beauty. Let there be the faces of our beloveds, the sun in their eyes. Let dusk climb our window and lead us to a pasture’s purple glow. Let’s drive out and idle on the roadside, lure the horses close enough to nuzzle. Let the street where we lived remember us. Let every passing car know where we’ve been and where we’ll go. Blanket us in the pink cloud  cover only a day with you can bring. Let every place we’ve been feel like home. Even the carnival. Even a field of fireworks. Let there be tenderness. Let us be here together again.”

-Ruth Awad

Lately I’ve been feeling, as I suspect we’ve all been feeling, disconnected. And I know that in considering this feeling there is a deep sense of irony within the fact. Weren’t we supposed to be more connected? Wasn’t the brick laden campus of our college adolescence supposed to be echoed within the dark blue glow of Tumblr when we left those bricks a few years back? Weren’t we all gonna stay in touch, meet every few months, and chat on facebook, or facetime, or zoom? But then, of course, this was always naive and we knew it. A pandemic could only set us further apart. 

It is ironic then that within this moment I am fortunate enough to get my hands on this soft soliloquy of a photobook by Julie Rae Powers. At a moment when the pandemic promises to further cleave us apart, here is something which echoes with longing, with sweetness, with nostalgia, and with care. More than many books I have spent time with over these last few months Once More, Gently speaks a truly sincere voice to the part of my heart which is aching quietly in this moment. That little part of my heart that reminds me that ‘chosen family’ is often fragmented and scattered, and that the part of me which yearns for a return to those halcyon days of queer adolescence also knows well that that time has passed.

Once More, Gently, by Julie Rae Powers is something of daydream. Introduced with an evocative bit of poetic prose by the writer Ruth Awad, the photographic body contained within its pages calls out to the reader with the soft naivete of what Julie Rae describes as “a second queer adolescence”. Think back and you’ll see that familiar time in the life of a recently-out individual when the possibilities of their newly embraced identity and community falls gently but with excitement upon the wonders of the world.

In my own experience Julie Rae’s work evokes a warm day on campus in fall and spring, before or after the winter had settled in to sequester us to our dorm rooms. It brings up times when we wandered through the neighborhood, staring at horses which made their way to the street looking for carrots from a friendly passerby. It feels like a moment at Coney Island, or a joint shared in a kiddy pool. Like laying out on the great lawn watching fireworks detonate in the distance or like those first drag shows in the student center. 

These moments, unique to me, are drawn out in surprising ways by Julie Rae’s camera. Within their photographs colors pop with the saturated flamboyance of a memory, reflecting from one moment onto the next in the subtle tonal shifts of a grass lawn or of a loved one's face. In one image, a singer performs in the apparently empty room of a bar, alone on a non-stage within the cheap flashing RGB lights of a DIY space. In the next image a smiling face looks on lovingly, those same lights dancing off of his cheeks. There is togetherness there despite an apparent isolation. A queerness that bridges the blank white space of the book's gutter.

Interspersed throughout their oeuvre of swirling portraits are the familiar vignettes of a suburban neighborhood, glowing in the light of a rising or setting sun. These moments, though rendered with a beautiful glow, also contain within them that sense of unease. Glimpsing through bushes at porches and windows, or settling upon cracked asphalt, the gaze here feels a bit more ominous. They speak softly to the that flipside of queer adolescence. To the anxiety, alienation, and the loneliness of departure from cisnormative systems.

Throughout their work Julie Rae has explored the intricacies of queer life through many lenses. In previous projects like Butch Dysphoria their work has focused on the personal and bodily condition of dysphoria and queerness. Through other projects like Out of Hiding, Julie Rae has concerned their camera with depictions of queer joy, community, love and the relief that comes with the rejection of closets and the embrace of others.

In ways Once More, Gently, works as a continuation of both of these projects operating as firm synthesis of discomfort and joy. In other ways Once More, Gently, transcends this dichotomy, bridging into new territory altogether. Through photography, a medium best known for its ability to quickly render the present into the past, that weird sense of melancholy and warmth which is so hard to articulate comes front-and-center.

Though it is fundamentally joyous I think I have to admit that the work makes me feel a bit sad. It reminds me of distance, and of warmth. Of community and of conditional isolation. It reads like an afternoon on campus, one of those last before the receipt of a diploma has you catapulted back into life at home, watching the sun set and clouds dazzle, while listening to the nervous laughter of people who already know what’s on the other side. In a way this work is about growing up, as much as it is about being young. About looking over to a friend who has whispered something you’ve been dying to hear. “Once more,” you’ll say to them. 

“gently.”

To return to the text which welcomes us into the liminal space of these images, I think that we’ll recognize that this was all worth it. That while pandemics, and schools, and cities might separate us, there is always a togetherness embodied within the shape of our queer memories. 

Friends. Partners. Lovers and family. Though the world may end we’ll still ask for beauty. Though the horses have returned to their barn, we’ll always have that memory. And though we’ll inevitably get older, we’ll also have these photographs to remind us of just how far we’ve come.