'Hot Moment' - Curated by Radclyffe Hall at Auto Italia, London
11 January - 14 March 2020

Hot Moment is a group portrait of three photographers, one which takes its title from Pollard’s own recollections on the period. Pollard writes, “It was now commonplace for me to be with a camera and I realised that what developed from this was a personal aesthetic of the ‘snap-shot’, the fleeting exposure of a split second, capturing the hot moment of a performance. During the eighties I was working with and photographing actors, dancers, writers and theatre companies. It was a work of fantasy and make believe where the detail of a gesture or the caress of light on a shoulder were part of the alchemy that captured my attention.” In this space of fantasy, dyke photography offered an internal visibility crucial in shoring up temporary communities otherwise subject to periodic dispersion and ongoing precarity. The medium was a critical means to document cultural activity and community organising taking place in tandem with artists’ practices, namely: live theatre, club spaces, book fairs, and, of course, spaces of political protest. Hot Moment depicts the interlinked activities of these lesbian-identified communities of activists, writers, and performers. The exhibition is animated by the desires for and a politics of representation' – Auto Italia website.