In 2013, photographer and producer Chuck Pfoutz attended his first drag pageant. He was inspired. “Some of the best production I’d ever seen,” Pfoutz says. “I was fascinated by how far people would go to win a crown,” he adds. “Hours of effort to achieve something great and entertain while doing it. I documented 30…
David Dwight IV: Forged From Ferguson
Philadelphia-area native David Dwight IV, 25, didn’t plan on sticking around after getting his biomedical engineering degree from Washington University in St. Louis. But his priorities and his trajectory had to pivot: During his final year, unarmed Ferguson teenager Michael Brown was killed by police, and things changed. “The killing of Michael Brown Jr. and…
Joss Barton: A Necessary Defiance
It’s by some cosmic fluke that the people of 2019 St. Louis get to experience the outrageous wonder that is Joss Barton, when everything about her indicates she rightfully belongs in the provocative art scene of 1970s New York — a time when the city was so sinister, tourists were given brochures with survival tips.…
Bryon Pierson: There’s an App for That
Bryon Dawayne Pierson Jr. is driven in the way someone is driven to escape a burning house. At just fifteen, the Alton native ran away from his dysfunctional family, determined not to succumb to their lifestyle of guns, drugs and sex addiction. Despite bouncing through six foster homes, Pierson excelled in O’Fallon (Illinois) High’s wrestling…
Shawn Jennings Kohrs: He Makes a Wish Come True
Sitting in the garage with family in 2012, Shawn Jennings Kohrs stumbled upon a Facebook post that changed his life. A woman in Kentucky wrote with intimate details about how her thirteen-year-old son knew he was going to die, but still worried about her well-being. “Two seconds in I was invested, and knew I had…
Better Together: How Alicia Markstone and Janessa Highland saved each other — and rose to the top
When Janessa Highland became show director at Martha’s Vineyard in Springfield, Missouri, in 2011, she knew she was following in big footsteps. That included those of Alicia Markstone, the 2002 Miss Gay USofA at Large, who had gone from small-town Missouri to Florida to be the show director at the famed Suncoast Resort Hotel. But…
For Chuck Pfoutz, New Show at Third Degree Glass Factory Is a Triumph Over the Haters
Blacklisting is an art deeply woven into the culture of St. Louis, a city that produces cold winters, but even colder shoulders. The July and August 2017 efforts of a disgruntled rival to blacklist photographer and producer Chuck Pfoutz, however, completely lacked the hallmarks of our local style. There was no subtlety and intrigue, no…
Meth at the Melrose
My husband sleeping by my side, I woke from a Saturday afternoon nap two summers ago to my friend and downstairs neighbor, whom I’ll call Keith, passionately kissing me. My Tower Grove apartment building, which we called “the Melrose,” was like a big gay frat house back then, a place where it wasn’t uncommon for…
Shooting on a Shoestring: St. Louis Native Kyle Coffman’s iPhone Film Selected to Screen at Marina del Rey Film Festival
Kyle Coffman was living comfortably with his longtime partner in Washington D.C, but was haunted by his unpursued dream of being a filmmaker. “I met my partner in Alton in 2003 and we moved to D.C. for his job. I never stopped writing and the dream never went away. Around 2011 I couldn’t take it…
Dustin Mitchell Bound for Texas State Penitentiary
This story is an update to Dustin Does Dallas. After years of getting off easy in St. Louis there was much speculation that Dustin Mitchell would skate by in Texas as well, and a five year deferred sentence for the charges he faced in Collin County gave an initial indication that might have been the…