FOLSOM EUROPE 2026 Photographs by Antonio Velez

Folsom belongs to a lineage stretching back to San Francisco’s first Folsom Street Fair in 1984, which emerged from the city’s South of Market leather community at a moment shaped by redevelopment, the AIDS crisis and queer community organizing. Its Berlin counterpart, Folsom Europe, was founded in 2003 and held its first street fair the following year, carrying that tradition of leather, fetish, visibility and community into a European context. Beyond the street fair itself, the nonprofit raises funds from its visitors each year, redistributing them to queer, HIV/AIDS, community and fetish organizations across Europe.

Photographed over two days at Folsom Europe in Berlin and shot entirely on 35mm film, the series moves through the claustrophobia and sensory overload of the crowd — bodies, leather, smoke, makeup, touch and moments of transformation collapsing into one another.

The camera stays close. Bodies appear and disappear into one another, obscured, exposed, adorned, watched and touched. Attention becomes selective: a hand, a mouth, a bruise, a harness, an exchange between strangers.

Having lived in San Francisco for many years, Folsom carries a particular significance for Antonio. He approaches these spaces with familiarity and affection, drawn to the freedom they create for desire, self-presentation and transformation.

The resulting images are less an overview of the event than an experience of being inside it — close enough that context begins to fall away and the body becomes its own landscape.
Folsom Europe 2026 Berlin, September 11–12, 2026 Photographed entirely on 35mm film Photography by Antonio Velez

The complete series is available as a self-published digital photographic zine. CHECK IT OUR HERE

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