Erik M. Kommer isn’t much for late nights, so it’s ironic that he’s spent the past decade embedded in Chicago’s LGBTQ club scene, documenting it with his photography. “It took a long time to get the swing of all that,” he admits. “I’m a daytime person. I take a disco nap for sure.”
But it was within these spaces, amid drag queens and club kids, that Kommer found a sense of belonging. He came out as a high schooler in rural Iowa, where he dealt with bullying. After moving to Chicago to study photography at the School of the Art Institute, earning his BFA in 2013, he discovered his new city’s queer clubs — and marveled at the “weird beauty” and irrepressible joy of the community he saw there. “I went as a patron before I photographed any of these things,” says Kommer, now 34. “I was curious about these spaces and the lives of the people.”
He started spending more time at the clubs while dating the drag performer Lucy Stoole. (They are no longer together but remain friends.) A party promoter hired Kommer to take photos for social media, but soon he was snapping pictures — tens of thousands over the years — for his own project, primarily in three spots: Queen!, a weekly party at Smartbar, located below Metro in Wrigleyville; Slo ’Mo, a monthly bash at Sleeping Village in Avondale; and Lake View’s Berlin Nightclub, which closed last year. “These are not just photos in the club,” Kommer says. “They capture a really true sense of time and place.”
That goes for the people in his photos, too — not least drag queens like Detox (above) and club kids such as Nico, Bon Bon, and JoJo Baby, who died of cancer in 2023. “That’s what I bring to nightlife, the ability to slow down and actually take a portrait, not just a snapshot,” Kommer says. “But if there’s somebody dancing like crazy and everyone’s around them rallying, that’s truly a moment.”
“JoJo was the first person you’d see, this beautiful person in this amazing outfit who’d greet you at the door,” says Kommer. “They were a little bit of a mom, a little bit of a dad, a little bit of a brother, a little bit of an aunt. They were everything. I feel like I took them for granted. They were always there, and I thought they’d always be around.”
“If you walk in there stonefaced, not in a good headspace, people are going to be like, Eww, please go away! But if you’re like, Hey, I’m having a good time and I’m a part of this community, they are receptive and excited to have their photo taken.”