Keri Pickett knew her uncle Roy Blakey was a photographer. But a box tied with rope revealed a part of his career she had not known: HE, his 1972 book of male nudes.

It was another doorway into the life of a deeply private man whose photographs had reached gay audiences far beyond his family. Now Pickett’s documentary Uncle Roy brings that life, and their relationship, to the screen.

Born in Oklahoma in 1930, Blakey dreamed of performing on ice. He traveled internationally with Holiday on Ice before becoming a photographer in New York. Performers, famous faces and men became subjects of his camera, while his collection of theatrical skating memorabilia grew across decades.

His photographs of men were an important part of that creative life. The images gave male beauty and desire a place in art and publishing, reaching readers who could find recognition in the work.

Pickett followed her uncle to New York to pursue photography herself. Their connection grew into an adult friendship and, eventually, a shared photography studio in Minneapolis. As she learned more about his work, she also came to understand the scale of the history he had preserved.

There were two substantial legacies to protect: his photography and his skating collection. The latter contained around 44,000 items, including programs, photographs, posters and costumes. That number describes the skating collection, rather than a count of his photographs of men.

When Blakey developed dementia, Pickett became his caregiver. The documentary follows the increasingly urgent task of preserving his work alongside the intimate responsibility of caring for someone she loved.

Blakey died in 2024, aged 94. His story continues through the film, which is currently traveling the festival circuit.

A new OUTTAKE VOICES interview with Pickett was published October 6. Uncle Roy screens at Pittsburgh’s Reel Q LGBTQ+ Film Festival on October 9 at 6:30 p.m., in Carnegie Mellon University’s McConomy Auditorium.

The photographs offer a record of beauty, performance and gay life. The relationship behind the film offers something equally moving: a niece taking care of the uncle who inspired her, and making sure other people would have the chance to know him.

Learn more at the official Uncle Roy website and see the Reel Q screening schedule.

📷 Courtesy of Keri Pickett / Uncle Roy; archival photography by Roy Blakey.

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Tim Walker has built a career creating extraordinary images for fashion magazines. His photographs of stars including Lady Gaga and Frank Ocean have helped make him one of Britain’s most recognizable photographic talents.

His latest project turns that imagination toward something intensely personal: queer lives, the people who shaped them and the community he grew up needing to see.

Fairyland: Love and Legends opens at London’s National Portrait Gallery on October 9, bringing together 250 specially created portraits following five years of work.

In a new Guardian interview, Walker describes the discovery that helped inspire the project. A plaque commemorating a gay-rights demonstration in London revealed that it had happened on the day he was born in 1970.

That coincidence gave him a connection to people who were already demanding a different future for gay lives.

Walker’s own childhood unfolded in a less welcoming atmosphere. He recalls homophobia at boarding school and the experience of growing up gay during the AIDS crisis. The exhibition brings those memories into conversation with the people who fought, created, cared and survived.

Its subjects include activists, artists and performers alongside nurses and survivors. Recognizable names share space with people whose contributions have rarely received comparable attention.

Among the portraits is Ian McKellen’s Love, an image surrounded by hands spelling its title. It supplies a wonderfully direct expression of the affection running through the project.

The exhibition also recognizes the response to HIV/AIDS, giving healthcare workers a place alongside the musicians whose work helped sustain queer life through those years.

Walker’s familiar fantasy remains part of the work, but so does the weight of real experience. The gallery describes Fairyland as a reclamation of a word used to shame queer people.

In his statement for the exhibition, Walker says: “I want visitors to the exhibition to remember that your difference is your power.”

For those who remember searching magazines, television or a record sleeve for evidence that they were not alone, this project offers something worth lingering over: a community with faces, names and stories.

Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends runs from October 9, 2026, to February 7, 2027, at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

📷 © Tim Walker, via the National Portrait Gallery.

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