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belonging: be-longing: being long is a 35mm black & white photo essay visualizing (and attempting to make sense of) an intense longing to extend individual existence across space and time. It is grounded in Elizabeth Freeman’s kinship theory of queer belonging, in which Freeman initially obstructs the etymology of the word “belonging” to focus on its present root verb, “to long.” That is, to think long, to reach, to desire, to hold out, to offer oneself beyond one’s time. To imagine the impossibilities of growing larger, not just spatially but temporally.
Queer belonging, then, is not found through means of the state (perhaps in what we often imagine as a progressive equal marriage law), creating families, or contributing to modes of capitalism. With a meandering assembly of biomimicry, the Hudson Valley mud season, dilapidated houses, friendship, fog, and love—my photo essay presents queer belonging as something found in the natural world.
Levi Langley is a first-year at Gallatin studying journalism and creative writing. Levi is interested in how literary culture can preserve and sustain communities in spite of rapid technological advancement and gentrification. She is from Austin, Texas, and loves to write about music, books, and people who don’t exist (fiction).
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