Platform Gallery is queer for the holidays, with works by artists from all over the country. Sweet faces are lovingly drawn inside the shapes of cock rings. Delicately painted same-sex couples embrace tenderly in cheap apartment bathtubs too small for them. There's also a whole series of portraits by a Seattle photographer who has spent six years putting her queer shoulder to the wheel in a road-trip quest. The photographer's name is Molly Landreth.

We talked to her by phone the day before Thanksgiving about her project, Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America.

What we don't see in your photographs is you. What's up in Molly's queer holiday life?

I'm in Anacortes—I grew up in Mount Vernon, but my parents have a place here. So I'm in a log cabin. I'm pretty woodsy right now. I have ponies on my shirt; I'm not lying. And my girlfriend is here, with my sister and her husband and my parents, and they have all donned red plaid flannel shirts, which is pretty queer and pretty amazing.

Wait, why is that queer?

Just because it's performative and ridiculous, I guess. I actually had to go downstairs and tell them to stop doing something before I called you—because my dad and girlfriend and brother-in-law are practicing a little ukulele piece, a little Walk the Line. So that's what's happening. I just am cutting some brussels sprouts and leeks. It's festive. I'm not gonna lie. It's a festive, quirky family. I feel pretty good, pretty fortunate. I don't really know if there's a story in that, but that's where I'm at.

Is the project finished?

I've just decided that this is such a moment in time—I don't think it will be as critical if I keep it going for a decade. So I think I'll be cutting it off this spring. There'll be a handful of videos, probably around 70 portraits, and a book. The website will stay up and the videos will stay up for at least a year.

What will you do then?

I'm thinking of taking this to other countries where queer life is even less visible than it is here. Again, that's contingent on finding funding, and it's harder to connect with people. But I get e-mails all the time that are like, come to India! Queer Serbia!

Have you seen the Hide/Seek exhibition [of portraits of same-sex desire] that's coming to Tacoma next year?

I just got back from New York and I saw it. It's hard to verbalize a response right now, but it was wonderful. It was wonderful to see these artists who are so well known—like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg—to take these two American artists and to put them in a queer show was so cool. So often, shows about gay and lesbian identity are seen as LGBT shows at community centers, and I think that's wonderful, but to have so much weight attached to it.

Whose work have you admired over the years?

Catherine Opie for sure. I love her Domestic series. It's lesbian families around the United States. As I worked on my project in grad school, people were like, "You don't need to do this, Catherine Opie already did it." Kind of these statements like "We all have gay friends." Now I just wonder if they were really challenging me to defend my work. But what I've said is, it's been 10 years since she made that work, and the community has changed so much that it's time to see a bigger picture. Not just lesbians, not just the trans community, not just gay men, but to see them all... Another person I was really influenced by was Robert Frank—The Americans—his take on America in a certain time and a certain place. This is as much about what it means to be an American as it is about sexuality. It's the intersection of things—what it means to be a person of faith and a person of color and a queer person in a small town where you're told that there are no queer people.

Do you have any rules as an artist or that you tell your subjects?

I always tell the person that I am a queer artist and I am a part of this community that I am photographing, and that I want it to be a collaboration. So I tell them that I want them to wear something, or a lack of something, that represents who they are or who they want to be, and I tell them to suggest a place that would be a fitting stage for their presentation. Sometimes we talk about it for like an hour, and they want to tell me stories or bring in objects—their Best Boyfriend trophy or a certificate from when they immigrated to the United States. I show up and I promise to craft the best picture I can of them, and they show up and promise to present me with something that looks a lot like them.