Queer Platonic
Queer Platonic is a photographic collaboration by Lisa-Sophie Kempke and Sophia Emmerich that explores the depth, tenderness, and political significance of queer platonic relationships.
EXHIBITED IN 2022 IN BERLIN, NEW YORK CITY, LONDON AND HANNOVER.
Created over the course of 18 months, the series documents moments of closeness between queer friends — relationships that exist outside of romantic or sexual frameworks, yet are often just as formative, intimate, and sustaining. Through carefully composed portraits and quiet, emotionally charged scenes, Kempke and Emmerich turn their focus toward bonds that are frequently overlooked both in mainstream society and in dominant queer narratives.
The project emerged from the artists’ shared experience of queer friendship as a source of stability, understanding, and resilience. In a cultural landscape where queer lives are still largely portrayed through the lenses of love, sex, or discrimination, Queer Platonic insists on a more nuanced reality. It highlights friendships as spaces of care, growth, and mutual support — places where identity is affirmed rather than explained.
Central to the series is the concept of chosen family. For many queer people, biological families can be sources of distance, misunderstanding, or exclusion. Platonic relationships often become the foundation on which new forms of family are built — families defined not by blood, but by trust, shared experience, and emotional safety. Queer Platonic gives visual form to this reality, honoring the quiet strength of these connections.
Rather than staging grand gestures, the work lingers on small, meaningful interactions: bodies at ease with one another, shared domestic spaces, gestures of care. These images challenge the misconception that queer relationships are defined primarily by sexuality, and instead foreground friendship as a powerful, life-shaping force.
QUEER PLATONIC was exhibited in several cities around the world in 2022. In addition to the premiere in Berlin at P7 Gallery, the project was presented in a collective exhibition in New York City at East Village Art Collection. Furthermore, Queer Platonic was shown in cooperation with the British queer-focused platform WE CREATE SPACE in London. Most recently, the photo series was shown in Hannover at Kulturzentrum Faust - during which a talk on queer friendships took place, moderated by performance artist and coach Ilka Theurich.
