[The Guardian] A smalltown drag queen vapes at night: Michael O Snyder’s best photograph

A smalltown drag queen vapes at night: Michael O Snyder’s best photograph

‘My rural American hometown isn’t known for being tolerant towards nonconformity. We wanted to juxtapose the grimy backdrop with the glamour of drag’

Maxine Young is a drag queen, in Cumberland, Maryland, a small, post-industrial city in Appalachia. I took this photo in December 2022. We’d spent all day together at a drag brunch on a nearby farm. Afterwards, I got her to spend a few hours with me shooting portraits. This image is part of a long-term project, The Queens of Queen City, which I shot over the course of a decade, exploring drag and queer identities in the Appalachian region.

I first met Maxine back in 2012, the very first night that I was introduced to the drag scene in Cumberland. I grew up just outside the city and my sister and I were visiting my parents. We were flicking through the local newspaper to find something to do when I saw an advert for a drag show that night. I was just excited and fascinated that this could be happening in my home town – it isn’t known for being particularly open-minded or tolerant towards any kind of nonconformity.

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