Sylvia on a Tombstone in Greyfriars, Edinburgh 1989. Photograph: Del LaGrace Volcano View image in fullscreen Sylvia on a Tombstone in Greyfriars, Edinburgh 1989. Photograph: Del LaGrace Volcano Photography Interview ‘The world wasn’t ready for me’: Del LaGrace Volcano on photographing S&M scenes, leather-clad lesbians and a drag king self-portrait Lucy Knight Their scandalous work was once banned. Now it’s in museums. The photographer talks about a lifetime defying conformity – and their ‘very active’ sex life
Wed 15 Jul 2026 06.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google T he peaceful Swedish city of Örebro is not where you might expect to find Del LaGrace Volcano, the US photographer known for their subversive images depicting LGBTQ+ communities, drag kings and sexual desire. Yet this is the place they have called home for the last two decades, having moved with their ex-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 swimming pool with the pair’s two children. It is a far cry from the life they Volcano previously had in London, where they lived in squats, attended S&M fetish parties and documented lesbian cruising culture.
“I do miss it. I think London will always be my city,” Volcano tells me when they pick me up from my hotel in Örebro’s (virtually empty) city centre. Halfway between Stockholm and Gothenburg, the former trading hub known for is medieval castle is “not a queer city”, the photographer admits. Most of their neighbours don’t even know they are queer. Volcano, 68, is intersex and calls themself a “hermaphrodyke” – but these days they “pass as apparently a little old man”, they say with a grimace.
View image in fullscreen Self Portrait with Blue Beard, 1995. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist © Del LaGrace Volcano Formerly known as Della Grace, Volcano was brought up as a girl, but once they reached puberty it became apparent that their breasts and menstrual cycle were atypical. On a doctor’s recommendation they were given a breast implant that they didn’t want, and sent off to live as a woman. It wasn’t until the 1990s that their then-girlfriend encouraged them to stop plucking their facial hairs. From then on, they began to embrace their intersex identity, taking the photo Self Portrait with Blue Beard in 1995 , which would become one of their most recognisable works.
Much of the press Volcano got was sneery. “I feel like the world wasn’t ready for me,” they tell me. In one interview, published in this paper in 1995, a journalist described “gawping” at the “woman with a beard” who stood before her, while in the gay section of Time Out in 1997, a column entitled “Falling from Grace” detailed how Volcano made the author feel “extremely uncomfortable”.
Thirty years on, the artist is clearly fed up with their identity being debated and ridiculed – and so often getting in the way of what they actually want people to notice: their bold, striking, technically brilliant photographs. That’s not to say that Volcano hasn’t achieved a certain amount of fame. Their photograph series depicting lesbian subcultures, Queer Dyke Cruising and Love Bites, were hugely influential, if controversial at the time (Love Bites was briefly banned by the US customs service because of its explicit lesbian content). But it seems that Volcano is still waiting for their work to get the kind of validation – particularly financiall…