Queer Nature Photography Awards 2026
"The Declaration"
Angela J. Farmer
"The Declaration"
Waved Albatross (Phoebastria irrorata) — Española Island, Galápagos
I call this The Declaration because that is what I witnessed. Two waved albatross on a lava-rock stage, lit by a single beam of sunset light, throats raised, beaks open, calling to each other and to whoever else is listening. This is the sky-point, one gesture in a longer courtship sequence that includes bill-circling, bowing, and the percussive clack of beak against beak. Waved albatross perform this ritual every breeding season. It strengthens the pair bond. It synchronizes two birds for the long shared labor ahead, incubation, feeding, defending a single chick across months at sea. It is, in the most literal sense, a declaration: this is mine, and I am hers.
I have spent thirty-two years photographing wild places, and I have come to believe that ritual is what every long love eventually requires. Not because the love is in doubt, but because love that lasts has to be declared, out loud, over and over, in language the other person recognizes as belonging only to the two of you.
Queer people know something about declaring love out loud. We have had to. We have done it at city halls and at kitchen tables and at gravesides and at protests, in countries where it was celebrated and in countries where it was criminalized. We have done it loudly because for a long time the world refused to hear it any other way.
The waved albatross is Critically Endangered. The light catches them for a moment, and then it doesn't. There are fewer of them every year. There will be fewer of these declarations.
So let this be one of them. Two birds on a rock, in the last light of the day, saying out loud: we are here, we have chosen each other, and we will keep choosing.
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About the Photographer
Name: Angela J Farmer
Age: unknown
Nationality: United States
How does your identity influence your work?
I photograph as a Two-Spirit First Nations woman — an identity that is both queer and Indigenous, and inseparable from either. I was raised to understand that everything living carries knowledge: animals, elders, oceans, ancestors. That worldview is what makes me see queer love in a pair of albatross before I see anything else. I photograph the endangered because I come from the endangered.
What message do you hope to convey with your work about the intersection of queerness and biodiversity in nature?
That queerness is not a human invention — it is a language nature has been speaking for millions of years, in every ecosystem, in every direction. When we protect biodiversity, we are protecting the full spectrum of ways life chooses to love, partner, parent, and become. Diversity is not decoration. It is survival.
What do you think is the importance of highlighting diversity in both nature and society, and how can photography play a role in this?
A photograph puts something undeniable in front of a viewer's eyes. It ends the argument. When someone sees two albatross sky-pointing at sunset, they cannot claim queerness is unnatural. Photography is how the invisible becomes visible — and visibility is how endangered species, endangered cultures, and endangered communities finally get protected.
What is your favorite example of queerness in nature?
Clownfish. Every anemonefish is born male. The largest fish in the anemone is always female — and if she dies, the largest male becomes she. Finding Nemo got it entirely wrong. The truth is queerer, wiser, and older than any story Hollywood has told about a family.
A note from the Narwhal Rainbow Alliance
Albatrosses are renowned for their highly complex, lifelong monogamous partnerships, and same-sex pairings—particularly female-female bonds—are a well-documented and evolutionary successful phenomenon within the Phoebastria genus. Two females can perform the exact same elaborate, synchronized courtship dances to bond for life, taking turns incubating eggs and cooperatively rearing a single chick (often fertilized by a male from a neighboring pair). This "cooperative parenting" ensures that precious chicks survive, proving that enduring devotion and family structures in the wild are beautifully diverse. Tragically, as a Critically Endangered species, the waved albatross faces severe threats from commercial longline fishing (where they are accidentally caught on baited hooks), marine plastic pollution, and nesting habitat degradation. Protecting them requires enforcing seabird-safe fishing practices, reducing global ocean plastics, and strictly safeguarding their isolated breeding sanctuaries on the Galápagos Islands.
Waved Albatross (Phoebastria irrorata) – Critically Endangered 🔴
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