John Simone's
Photographic Voyages
A Curious Visual Atlas of the World
Exhibited
June 18 - July 5, 2026
Youngplace Arts Centre ~ Toronto
John Simone’s Photographic Voyages brings together 300 photographs
from 50 countries and five continents, created during Simone’s five years working
as Senior Photographer and Photography Teacher aboard Princess Cruises.
The photographs are organized into 38 themed grids
and feature groupings. Each grid gathers images from different places
by rhythm, contrast, humour, subject, colour, gesture, and feeling
rather than by geography alone.
The written descriptions act as short interpretive keys.
They do not explain every image; they open the connections between them
— sacred and strange, comic and ceremonial, natural and artificial,
ordinary and absurd.
Together, the grids form a visual field: part archive,
part travel record, part personal map of what happens when
a photographer keeps looking closely at the world in motion.
Click to Open and Enlarge
Artist Statement
In the 1980s,
I photographed New York nightlife—
downtown stars and uptown celebrities,
beautiful chaos, and the theatre of being seen.
It was a sealed ecosystem: exaggerated, performative,
and completely convincing while you were inside it.
Years later,
I went looking again, this time
across more than 50 countries.
What I found wasn't so different.
A curious world where the sacred
and the strange sit comfortably side by side.
Where devotion, decoration, humour, and spectacle
blur together.
A carved figure, a storefront display,
a gesture between strangers—each carrying
its own meaning, its own quiet absurdity.
The boundaries begin to slip:
between reverence and play, nature and artifice,
history and the present. Things start to feel familiar
for reasons you can't quite explain.
John Simone's Photographic Voyages
brings together 300 photographs from a much
larger archive. There is no fixed path
through the work—only a rhythm of looking,
noticing, and connecting.
I'm not interested
in capturing the world.
I'm interested
in catching it in the act—
just before it explains itself.
Curatorial Framework Statement
Kelly McCray:
Known for his documentation of New York’s
queer nightlife and celebrity culture in the 1980’s,
John Simone’s early work captured an exclusive, insulated
urban nightclub scene bordering on the absurd.
Decades later, after joining Princess Cruises as a senior photographer
for five years, Simone turned his queer aesthetic gaze to the unpredictable
outer and often outermost worlds. Travelling from Japan to Morocco,
Taiwan and beyond Simone captured an eccentric collage of
humanity from across the globe.
His lens punctures/embraces the curious peculiarities
created by man and nature.
In a world that is either unseen or taken for granted,
Simone illuminates atypical scenes throughout our shared orb,
including realms of religion and the flora/fauna of the natural world.
From historical mermaid prow figureheads grasping their own breasts,
sculpted to ensure successful voyage for sailors to a leering sarcophagus and sacred,
enshrined deities winking through Disneyfied eyes remind viewers that man-made borders,
beliefs and values are often pierced when challenged through the queer lens.
Kelly McCray •
Artist & Curator
Artist Biography
John Simone began his career
photographing New York nightlife in
the late 1980s—Downtown celebrities,
club superstars, and the beautifully
constructed chaos of people being seen.
Working under the name Johnny Paparazzo,
he later documented Toronto's nightlife and
entertainment scene, where identity, performance,
and spectacle blurred into something both
glamorous and faintly absurd.
He wasn't just
photographing the scene—
he was inside it, watching it,
and quietly taking it apart.
Years later, Simone turned
that same eye outward, travelling
to more than 50 countries and photographing
without a fixed subject—only an instinct for
the telling detail, the strange coincidence,
and the moment that reveals more than it explains.
His current exhibition,
John Simone's Photographic Voyages,
brings together 300 photographs from a vast archive,
installed as a continuous visual field.
Moving between cultures,
objects, gestures, landscapes,
and everyday encounters, the work
reflects a consistent perspective:
that the world, everywhere, is performing—
sometimes knowingly, often not.
A Curious Visual Atlas of the World,
the exhibition explores people, places,
traditions, humour, beauty, and the unexpected
moments that connect us across cultures.
"Simone's photography doesn't try to
capture the world. It catches it in the act."
John Simone Interview - Glossi Magazine
Click to view RuPaul: 
Click to view Sister Dimension: 
Click to view Leigh Bowery: 
Click to view Lady Bunny: 
Click to view Michael Musto: 
Click to view A Files: 
Click to view B Files: 
Click to view C Files: 
Click to view D Files: 
Click to view E-F-G Files: 
Click to view H-I Files: 
Click to view J Files: 
Click to view K Files: 
Click to view L Files: 
Click to view M Files: 
Click to view N Files: 
Click to view R Files: 
Click to view S Files: 
Click to view T-Z Files: 
Click to view James St. James: 
Click to view Susanne Bartsch: 
Click to view It Twins: 
Click to view Nanzi Zipkin: 
Click to view International Chrysis: 
Click to view Julie Jewels: 
Click to view Michael Alig: 
Click to view Larry Tee: 
Click to view Goldy Loxx: 
Click to view Miss Perfidia: 
Click to view Joey Arias: 
Click to view: 
Click to view Denise Stoughton: 
Click to view Downtown People: 
jetsetjohnny.ca
Exotic World Travel
John Simone Photography
Simone spent 5 years traveling
to over 80 countries as Senior Photographer
and Photography Teacher on Princess Cruises
These are the first Forty-four cities posted - with more to follow
Click to View any city to visit on John Simone Photography's jetsetjohnny.ca:
