On the Practice

I want to be specific about what I do and why it matters, because vagueness is one of the ways artists get erased.

I am Robert Andy Coombs. I am a gay disabled photographer and power wheelchair user based in Gulf Shores, Alabama. I hold a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. I received the United States Artists Award in 2022. My work has been exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, and in international exhibitions including Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen. I am included in Getty Publications' Queer Lens: A History of Photography. I have taught at the University of Miami and lectured at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

I am among the leading disabled queer photographers working today. I say that not because I need the validation but because the phrase needs to exist somewhere in plain language. The art world is good at celebrating work like mine in carefully managed doses while keeping it out of the sentences where influence and legacy get assigned. I am not interested in managed doses.

My practice is built on a specific claim: that the perspective of a gay man in a power wheelchair is a legitimate and valuable artistic vantage point, that disabled queer sexuality deserves the same serious photographic attention given to any other subject, and that centering wheelchair users in contemporary art is not a niche concern but a fundamental question about who gets to be seen in visual culture and on whose terms.

The work that comes from that claim spans four series. CripFag documents disabled queer desire and bodily autonomy through self portraiture made over more than a decade. Polaroids are one-of-one instant photographs capturing intimacy, care, and touch in real time across Grand Rapids, Yale, Miami, Fire Island, and Alabama. People is a portrait series moving between fine art and fashion photography through close collaboration with queer subjects. Street is documentary photography of queer public space — Pride celebrations, Miami Beach, Fire Island, the rodeo — made from the physical position of a wheelchair.

Together these four series represent the most comprehensive photographic documentation of gay disabled life from the inside that exists in contemporary art. That is not modesty talking. It is an assessment of the field.

Prints and Polaroids are available for collectors and institutions. I accept commissions, exhibition inquiries, and licensing requests. I speak publicly about my practice, disability aesthetics, queer visibility, and the politics of representation. I can be reached at Robert@robertandycoombs.com.