The memory of Leonardo da Vinci’s mural has long functioned as a cultural touchstone: a carefully composed scene that carries religious weight and historical authority. In a contemporary retelling, LA-based trans film photographer Smiles Meyers dismantles that authority by placing queer and trans people in the center of a reimagined table. The project, titled The First Gathering, was created as an act of both celebration and response to political pressures that threaten queer existence. Rooted in analog technique and communal participation, this work speaks to how art can be a vehicle for social belonging and for reclaiming narratives that have historically excluded many bodies.
The First Gathering: reworking a sacred image
The First Gathering stages a new ritual. Shot on film, the images bring friends and chosen family into a composition that echoes the original while deliberately changing its cast and tone. For Meyers, the series grew from anger at attempts to silence marginalized communities and from a need to confront religious trauma—the long-lasting effects of spiritual instruction and exclusion. In place of guilt and hierarchy, the photographs offer warmth, movement and intimacy. The deliberate use of film photography and community models lends a tactile authenticity to the work, emphasizing memory, continuity and resistance rather than spectacle.
Process and community as resistance
The creative process was collaborative: Meyers invited peers to sit, to converse, and to be photographed as part of a communal reclamation. By centering queer and trans bodies, the project asks who is permitted to occupy spaces historically reserved for specific identities. The gathering becomes a refusal of cultural ostracization and a claim of presence. Mayer’s practice demonstrates how visual storytelling can counteract erasure: the images are an argument that love, joy and togetherness persist despite political hostility. In this way, the project is both aesthetic statement and social testimony.
The long shadow of federal power
Parallel to this artistic reclamation is a different story about institutional authority. John Edgar Hoover, commonly known as J. Edgar Hoover, shaped the modern federal investigative apparatus during the 20th century. Born on January 1, 1895, in Washington, D.C., Hoover rose through the Justice Department and in 1924 was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation on May 10. He later became the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation when the bureau was founded on June 30, 1935, and he served in that capacity until his death on May 2, 1972. Over his long tenure—spanning multiple administrations—Hoover professionalized many investigative techniques, including the expansion of a centralized fingerprint file and the creation of a forensic laboratory.
Power, controversy and civil liberties
Hoover’s legacy is mixed: on one hand, he built institutional tools that modernized law enforcement; on the other, he amassed power in ways that violated legal and ethical boundaries. The bureau under his direction compiled extensive files, engaged in secretive surveillance, and created indexes used to blacklist individuals. Investigations later revealed patterns of illegal wiretapping, burglaries and targeted harassment of political dissidents. These practices demonstrate how surveillance can be weaponized against vulnerable communities and dissenting voices, reinforcing why oversight, transparency and civil rights protections remain essential.
Where art and history intersect
When viewed together, the two stories illuminate a broader civic conversation. Meyers’s The First Gathering uses creative belonging to resist cultural exclusion, while the history of federal power under figures like J. Edgar Hoover explains how institutions can erase, intimidate or control marginalized lives. Art becomes a corrective: a way to assert identity, record presence and build community in the face of structural pressures. Both the photographs and the historical record remind us that representation, accountability and collective memory are entwined. In short, reclaiming a seat at the table is both a personal act of healing and a political statement against systems that have policed who belongs.