Intertwined: Spyros Rennt baring an evolving vision of intimacy and selfhood

The archiving of softness, Spyros Rennt continues his documentary work, showing a side of queer subculture we haven’t seen from his lens before in his new self-published photobook, Intertwined

Spyros Rennt’s Intertwined Photobook Celebrates Queer Affection, Self-Exploration, and Artistic Growth

Spyros Rennt’s newest self-published photobook, Intertwined, pays tribute to queerness through an affectionate lens. As the fourth volume in his expanding oeuvre, it flows naturally from his ongoing series that probes selfhood and personal identity. Rennt refuses to see his practice as a set of discrete chapters; instead, he views it as a continuous trajectory of curiosity, each release marking another step in his visual and emotional evolution.

He freely admits that his photography has drifted toward intimacy and tenderness. “If you open my first book,” he notes, “you’ll find energetic, almost orgasmic scenes that I don’t necessarily foreground any longer.” Intertwined is in fact his first publication in which no erection appears—a landmark that underscores how far the work has traveled since those raw beginnings.

Binding images into a book lets him pause and take stock. The printed page becomes a ledger of themes already explored and a roadmap to ideas still forming, allowing Rennt to refine his gaze while preserving the candid authenticity that defines his storytelling.

Digital Versus Film Photography Renaissance: Spyros Rennt Finds Clarity “Sobering Up” Through Analog Grain and Deliberate Process

The leap from film to digital ranks among photography’s most momentous shifts, reshaping professional workflows, artistic expression, and casual image-making. Though film never vanished, dwindling camera production shut down gelatin farms and local labs, raising costs and thinning access.

Over the last decade a full-blown film revival has taken hold. Photographers covet analog grain, color depth, and the glorious imperfections digital struggles to mimic. Classics such as Kodak Ektachrome have re-emerged, while indie brands like CineStill and Lomography re-energize the medium. Rennt leans deeply into this resurgence: film’s slow cadence grants him space to forge genuine bonds with his muses and to stay fully present in each frame.

That unhurried rhythm also delivers distance—the “sobering up” he needs to examine the contact sheet clear-eyed. Whether shepherding eleven rolls from Brazil through airport security or waiting weeks to see what magic flashed across a nightclub floor, he welcomes film’s uncertainty. Each light leak and exposure error suspends a sliver of time, a beauty impossible to replicate.

Sustaining Photographic History and Environmental Impact: Gelatin-Based Film, Queer Archives, and Mindful Image-Making

Any conversation about film inevitably brushes against sustainability. Traditional emulsions rely on animal-derived gelatin, raising ethical and ecological questions for creators attuned to the planet’s limits. Rennt is acutely aware of those stakes, following every roll “like an aluminum pocket of life” and treating each frame as precious.

Digitization has altered not only how photographs are shot but also how they circulate. Yet Rennt champions tangible objects—prints you can hand someone, books you must cradle in two palms. Physicality compels immersion in a way a glowing screen cannot. “I adore photobooks,” he says. “My own shelves overflow, and I wish I had the money—and space—for even more.”

Self-Publishing Photobooks as Queer Historical Documents: The Courage and Craft Behind Spyros Rennt’s DIY Bookmaking

All four of Rennt’s titles are self-published—a courageous stance in an era that loudly proclaims the death of print. Far beyond mere aesthetic artifacts, his books double as historical documents: archives of queer life, chronicles of Berlin, milestones within one artist’s file of personal memory. As queer culture migrates online—subject to algorithms and censorship—physical records become essential bulwarks against erasure.

Bookmaking itself shapes Rennt’s vision. Sequencing images into pairs and diptychs initiates conversations between moments linked solely by queerness and his roving lens. Intertwined slots into a larger, still-growing series that charts exuberant queer existence and Rennt’s own maturation—from the hedonistic frenzy of Lust Surrender (2020) to the gentle hush of today.

The Quiet Power of Intimate Queer Photography: Warmth, Softness, and Unspoken Relationships Beyond Sexuality

While earlier work pulsed with erect energy, Rennt’s latest pages radiate tenderness. “I’m more interested now in softness, in relationships, in the things left unsaid,” he explains. Clubs and bedrooms alike appear not as zones of pure sexuality but as stages for complex human connection.

Sun-yellow paper baths each photograph in gentle warmth, inviting readers to linger over affectionate exchanges. By letting queer stories sprawl full-bleed across the page, Rennt underscores their urgency: representation matters now more than ever. Instead of the familiar narrative of struggle, he foregrounds queer joy, hope, and a softly melancholic solidarity.

Queer Community Coalescence Amid Political Adversity: Intertwined Affirms Visibility, Solidarity, and Emotional Survival

Queerness encompasses more than non-heterosexual desire; it is a conscious detour from mainstream norms, a re-evaluation of accepted truths. Intertwined spotlights that detour, depicting friends, lovers, and wider communities merging in defiance of forces that seek to erase them.

Survival, Rennt reminds us, hinges on coalescence. Bodies tangled beneath strobes or in rumpled sheets generate emotional electricity, disrupt sexual orthodoxies, and enrich the living archive of queer life. By seeing others clearly, we see ourselves; Rennt’s candid imagery weaves disparate identities into a shared cultural and political awareness.

Bittersweet Berlin: Gentrification, Nightlife Shifts, and the City That Forged Spyros Rennt’s Photographic Eye

A decade ago, moving from Greece to Berlin sparked Rennt’s plunge into photography. Yet the city that first inspired him has morphed. Rapid economic growth and skyrocketing rents have gentrified once-affordable neighborhoods, pushing out the very residents who made Berlin magnetic. Landmark techno clubs face closure; alternative cultures struggle under financial strain.

Immersed in nightlife, Rennt harbors cautious optimism. Creative and queer communities, he believes, will adapt and endure. “When I arrived, many spaces defined the era—that era is gone, but that’s natural,” he says. As old venues fade, new ones emerge, mirroring Berlin’s ever-shifting identity. Revival isn’t a distant dream; it’s a continuous, bittersweet process already under way.

Xheni Balliu