‘The World Wasn’t Ready for Me’: Del LaGrace Volcano on Filming S&M Scenes, Leather-Clad Lesbians, and a Drag King Self-Portrait | Photography

TThe sleepy Swedish town of Örebro is not where you might expect to find Del Lagrese Vulcano, the American photographer known for his subversive images depicting LGBTQ+ communities, drag kings and queer fetishes. However, this is where they have made their home for the past two decades, having moved in with their former partner, Matilda Wurm, an associate professor at the city’s university. Now, their days are punctuated by walks around a nearby forest and trips to the local outdoor pool with their two children. It’s a far cry from the life they previously lived at Vulcano in London, where they lived in squats, attended S&M fetish parties and documented lesbian cruising culture.

“I really miss it. I think London will always be my city,” Vulcano told me when they picked me up from my (almost empty) hotel in downtown Örebro. Halfway between Stockholm and Gothenburg, the former trading center known for its medieval castle is “not an eccentric city,” the photographer admits. Most of their neighbors don’t even know they’re weird. Vulcano, 68, is bisexual and calls himself a “hermaphrodite” — but these days “they look like a little old man,” they say with a grimace.

Previously known as Della Grace, Vulcano was raised as a girl, but once she reached puberty, it became apparent that her breasts and menstrual cycle were atypical. On the doctor’s recommendation, they were given a breast implant they did not want, and sent to live as a woman. It wasn’t until the 1990s when their then-girlfriend encouraged them to stop plucking facial hair. Since then, they began to embrace their bisexual identity, and took a self-portrait with Bluebeard in 1995, which became one of their most famous works.

Much of the press Vulcano got was satirical. They told me: “I feel like the world was not ready to receive me.” In one interview, published in this paper in 1995, a journalist described “staring” at the “woman with the beard” who stood before her. While in the gay section of Time Out in 1997, a column called “Falling from Grace” explained how Volcano made the author feel “very uncomfortable.”

Thirty years later, the artist is clearly tired of their identity being discussed and ridiculed – often standing in the way of what people actually want to notice: their bold, striking and artistically brilliant images. This is not to say that Volcano has not achieved a certain amount of fame. Their photo series depicting lesbian subcultures, such as Queer Dyke Cruising and Love Bites, were hugely influential, if controversial at the time (Love Bites was briefly banned by the US Customs Service due to its explicit lesbian content). But it seems like Volcano is still waiting for their work to get the kind of validation — especially financially — that they feel it deserves.

“I had a really big crisis when I was 65, because that’s the age when people retire,” they say. “I looked at myself through a very hetero-capitalist lens and felt like a failure.” By that point, their marriage to Worm was over. They also had a feeling that they would die at 67, the age at which their mother died. The Volcano have a dazzling appeal, and their importance is also due, for example, to the fact that they share a birthday with celebrities including Helen Mirren and Sandra Bullock, as well as with their ex-husband. Having moved on from this doomed era, they have found a new lease on life, and with a big show coming this summer across two sister venues in the UK: one at Auto Italia in London and the other at the Edinburgh Arts Festival.

They explain that Vulcano wants his subjects to feel noticed and cared for—acknowledging that this is a kind of corrective response to not feeling seen or cared for as a child. Their parents divorced when they were young children, so they spent their childhood yo-yoing between their mother’s hippie house in Santa Maria, California, and their father’s strict Mormon family in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Although they discovered as teenagers that their mother and stepfather were in a same-sex relationship, their mother was not supportive of them when they announced that they were bisexual. Vulcano describes their mother as a “pathological liar”, as she told them that their father held her at gunpoint on the day they were born – a story later debunked by their father. However, since her death, they “miss her very much”, despite wanting to escape from her for most of their childhood. They say: “I ran away from home a lot” and “I officially left home when I was 17.”

Vulcano drives us to their apartment a few miles from the city center, insisting that we stop along the way for a “short ride around the castle.” Although living in Örebro has not always been easy for an artist, I feel their pride in its beauty as they show it to me. While Volcano prepares pies and salad, they let me look through the books and magazines I’ve appeared in, and view photos from their archives. One in particular caught my attention, a portrait of novelist Leslie Feinberg. Feinberg is positioned in the middle, looking directly into the camera, in a way that might be aggressive but is somehow not. “I think it’s the best photo Leslie has ever taken,” Vulcano says, and I have a feeling they might be right.

They make no secret of their exasperation about critics’ lack of focus on the artistic quality of their work, and constantly ask me about my knowledge of queer artists and figures from the 1980s. “I want to give to your generation [I am 30] “History lesson,” they say with sighs, and the next day, as we set off for a walk through the woods together, I have to admit that I’ve never heard of the sexologist Annie Sprinkle.

Without the forest, which Vulcano tries to walk or bike through every day, “it would be much more difficult to live here,” they told me. When we get to the outdoor gym, Vulcano tries to do a backflip – he gives up after a while, not wanting to hurt himself. They then admitted: “I wish I could show you off today, I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t.” A few days later, they sent me a WhatsApp video of themselves doing tricks with their baby, “just so you can see.”

Whether it’s their gymnastics or photography abilities, Vulcano is keen to justifiably show off their skills. Back at the apartment after our walk, they pulled more of their literature out of drawers plastered with catchy labels like “Trans Portraits,” “Women of Power” and “Precious.” They retreat to lie on the living room rug as they share stories of their encounters with famous gay people, from selling a print to Lilly Wachowski, co-author of The Matrix, turning down famous feminist Judith Butler’s request to take their photos for free, to their brief Romeo and Juliet-style love affair with a well-known journalist and activist (none of their friendship groups approved of the relationship due to Vulcano’s involvement in S&M). A scene that the journalist was not a part of at all.)

Although he has had a “very, very, very active sex life” in the past, Volcano is not currently dating. “I would like to have some kind of romance in my life again,” they told me. “But no one lives up to Matt, that’s the problem.” Vulcano had been with Worm for 14 years, and although their wedding was Vulcano’s third, it was the only time they had married “for love.” Their first two marriages, in 1982 and 1995, were to cis gay men – the second, to Johnny Vulcano, served the purpose of giving them a cool title.

However, for now, anything more than a “trip out of the country” is likely to get in the way of Vulcano’s ambition. They want to write a memoir eventually, but before it can be published, “some people need to die, some people need to grow up, and some statutes of limitations need to have expired.” Until then, they are focusing on building what they call their “queer archive of resistance.” The ultimate dream is to own an apartment complex, somewhere “where at least 10 people can come and stay, to research and study” and explore the artist’s back catalogue. “Old and young, gay and straight alike, will come to visit me in Sweden,” they describe. “I will tell my stories, show my photos, cook for people, and have interesting conversations. This is the best case scenario.”