Queer Housing Works Bookstore Wedding in SoHo by Photographer Ezlan Powers

You know when you get home from an amazing trip and you just have to tell people all about it in great detail? Well this is that. I wish I’d taken more street photography while I was there but I was saving my energy for this stylized New York Soho wedding. Taking place at the well known Housing Works Bookstore. A bookstore that dedicates 100% of its event profits are donated to those with HIV/AIDS.

The locations is known as the coffee shop slash bookstore than anyone can read an entire book without paying much mind to buying it. Which I really admired reading upon doing my research on this bookstore venue, as a poor kid I couldn’t buy all the books I needed. Some places wouldn’t even let you read them before buying. But not this place! It is snuggly wedged in between the busier streets of Soho and serves the locals a space to rest when they need to get away from that fast life.

When Alix (they/them) and Angie (she/her) first reached out to me they were planning an intimate backyard wedding in Alix’s parents backyard in Chicago, I was excited to work with them. But then the COVID pandemic put our plans on hold for quite some time. We eventually arrived to this day, their wedding day, years after they’d already been officially married. But this was the ceremony. The moment in front of all their closest friends and family. Which is arguably my favorite part of everyday because the ceremony is where all the emotions I search for in peoples faces make their debut.

I love spending time sitting in the audience watching as much as I am snapping. During their ceremony I was super focused on lighting though as you can see it was a bit darker inside to create that moody ambiance. I opted in the end to shoot with mostly natural light aside from dance floor photographs to preserve the dimly lit feeling of the ceremony. Same for the dinner, I wanted to capture the candlelight dinner in Soho with all their loved ones how it was being seen in front of me. I think natural light photography holds more emotion in my eyes. More atmospheric and documentary feeling.