Alli Royce Soble
photographer & fine artist
The desire and passion to create started very early for me. I never played with dolls as a child. I preferred to draw or doodle. My parents gave me a Kodak DISC camera when I was ten years old. I took pictures of everything and everyone. I was just having fun, but looking back now, I had already started to document my life.
This need to document drives me. My photographs record my world—Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ community, the art community, and political activism in the city. I experience moments in my life more deeply with my camera in hand, as I sit and wait for the perfect moment to take a shot.
My drive to document goes beyond the visual. I have also traced my life through a series of journals. I started writing in 1982 in a Garfield diary I received for my 8th birthday. There is significant overlap in the friends, associates, and events represented in the photos and journal.
The camera and writing have been ways to mark the joyous celebrations and ways to cope with difficult moments. I will never stop taking photographs.
It is who I am.
A Documentarian.
A Photographer.
Capturing my history,
which is now Our History.
“There is a fire inside me that drives me to document the experiences of the people and events in my life. It is who I am.”― Alli Royce Soble
Polaroids
The Rotunda
The exhibition begins with eight Polaroids: four by Alli Royce Soble and four by Jon Arge. Polaroids are instant cameras with self-developing film. They produce a print a short time after a picture is taken.
Polaroids were the perfect format for capturing what Soble called “our secret places” in the time before digital cameras and mobile phones with cameras.
The Polaroids in this section are enlarged and mounted to light boxes. Presenting the photos this way emphasizes the warm, comic book-like colors of the Polaroids and the playful and performative aspects of the moments they document.
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Life in Images
The Corridor
Soble carried a camera all the time and was always taking photographs.
“I wanted to document the creativity and artistic lifestyles of people my age and the world around them,” Soble says.
They also took the additional step of mounting the photos in albums and captioning them. This section of the exhibition presents eight pages from the 24 photo albums in Soble’s collection.
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Questions
Consider the five questions as you browse the photographs:
Click HERE or scroll to the bottom of the page to comment.
Materials
the case
Writing always played an important part in Soble’s documentation work.
This case contains the first diary they started in 1982, a journal with entries from 2018, and an album with photos from December 1999 to April 2000.
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Alli Royce Soble Papers at Rose Library
Scope and Content Note
The collection consists primarily of 24 photograph albums compiled by Alli Royce Soble and documenting the Atlanta lesbian and arts communities from 1992-2000. The albums are comprised mostly of 35mm color prints; Soble is the photographer of all images in the albums.
The photographs document drag shows, fashion shows, parties and other events at Atlanta-area establishments such as My Sister’s Room and The Tower. The albums also document Atlanta Pride celebrations, Soble’s group and solo exhibitions, Soble family events, personal vacations, and several lesbian weddings. Soble annotated each album, providing captions and descriptions for most photographs. There is also a small amount of printed ephemera in the collection, primarily promotional material for club events in Atlanta. Most ephemera features photography by Soble.
The collection also contains 7 journals dating from 1982-1998 and documenting Soble’s adolescence and early adulthood, including entries centered around coming of age, sexuality, and depression. The journals and the photograph albums cover much of the same period of Soble’s life and there is significant overlap in the friends, associates, and events represented in the photos and journals. There is also a journal pre-printed with writing prompts that contains entries from 1995-2018.
Emory Finding Aids – Alli Royce Soble
Born Digital Materials
Born digital materials consist of 226 photographs taken following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges requiring states to recognize same-sex marriages. The ruling was handed down on June 26, 2015. The collection includes photographs taken at the Fulton County Courthouse, Atlanta; photographs taken at a Georgia Equality rally at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta; and photographs taken in Midtown, Atlanta on June 26, 2015.
It also contains photos from 101 Gay Weddings, an event hosted by chef Art Smith at the InterContinental Hotel in Buckhead, Atlanta on June 28, 2015. It also includes photographs from the Atlanta rally against Georgia House Bill 757 in March 2016 and from vigils held in downtown Atlanta on June 14, 2016 for victims of the June 12, 2016 mass shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL.
CREDITS
The Emory Libraries makes every attempt to be in compliance with copyright laws. Due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify correct copyright holders, or to verify copyright status absolutely. We are eager to hear from any rights owners, so that we may obtain accurate information.
Please contact us if you have more information about the copyright status of any materials in this work, or if you believe we have not properly attributed your work or used it without permission at rose.library@emory.edu.
Copyright and Citation
Emory University does not control copyright for images in the Alli Royce Soble Papers archive. Images are made available for individual viewing and reference for educational purposes only such as personal study, preparation for teaching, and research. The reproduction, distribution, public display or other re-use of any content beyond a fair use as codified in section 107 of US Copyright Law is at the user’s own risk.
Preferred citation: [after identification of item(s)], Alli Royce Soble papers, Stuart A. Rose Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.
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