One of the joys of photography is being able to explore the nuances of a person’s life beyond the still image. The pre-shoot discussion and collaboration often serves as the context and catalyst for the photography. I had the joy of meeting and photographing the multidimensional human being that is Danny Thanh Nguyen. He is a brilliant queer writer, scholar and kinkster of color who has made a point of proudly displaying all aspects of his life and the complexities that it entails.

His most recent awards and honors are proof of his commitment to his craft as well as the recognition of his peers. These include an artist residency at Caldera Arts, upcoming in January 2022, where he will be working on his memoir tentatively titled "After the Honeymoon Phase", a writing residency at Djerassi Artist Program, upcoming in February-March 2022, which was awarded by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network (DVAN), and the 2021 Artist Grant in Literary Arts from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

When I asked Danny how he identifies racially and ethnically he states, “I’m most likely to identify as Vietnamese or Southeast Asian. Depending on who I’m talking to, this will change. When I’m engaging with East Asian or pan-Asian people/groups, I’ll often claim Southeast Asian. When I’m with other Southeast Asian people/groups, I’ll often also claim Thai and Khmer Krom to honor my father’s familial background. I do this to assert the cultural and historical distinctiveness that makes us brown Asian people unique. We as a group have a different life experience that is devoid of the privileges of paler East Asians.

“How do you see your role and responsibility as a kinkster and writer and how it ties into your identity as a queer man of color?”

Tying into my work as an author writing about BDSM, I am also a Founder Father of ONYX Northwest, a community-based organization formed and operated by leathermen of color. We serve as an educational program and social network for men of color to safely explore their kink interests in a predominantly white leather community. While my first kink love was bondage, I am probably most known for my whipping abilities with tools such as floggers and singletails (I personally love snakewhips and bullwhips the most). I regularly perform whip demonstrations and performances at local San Francisco kink/fetish events. I have been known to teach workshops on kink—from technique classes for rope bondage and impact play, to partner negotiation and harm reduction/safety. I came into leather by way of the punk community more than the uniform fetish scene, and because of those punk roots I’ve always been conscious of my relationship to BDSM/kink as political. For that reason, I see myself more as a kink educator and entertainer than as an organizational leader.

His current project is a memoir interlinking personal essays that blend comedic storytelling with elements of cultural criticism. The memoir, tentatively titled After the Honeymoon Phase, examines issues of intimacy, sex, and belonging through the lens of queerness and race. The project is set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ scene, the Bay Area’s Southeast Asian ethnic enclaves, and the national leather community. The book explores how the tension between ethnic and sexual culture affects one’s experiences with romantic partners, gender, mental health, BDSM, and biological versus chosen families.

Danny states “I write both short fiction and creative nonfiction. I got my MFA in Fiction from Indiana University, but have been mostly focused on writing nonfiction almost exclusively over the last couple years. My fiction tends to be magical realism and I have a short story collection in progress that I’d like to complete after I finish the manuscript to my first book.”

Follow Danny Nguyen at www.linktr.ee/engrishlensons or on instagram https://www.instagram.com/engrishlessons/. You can also find more of Jason’s work at https://jasonjacksonimages.com