Award-winning photographer Magnus Hastings grew up in London. He attended the King Alfred School, Chelsea Art School, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Having taught himself photography in his teens, Magnus quickly realized after leaving drama school that he would much rather pursue photography than acting. Within months, Hastings was earning a living with his images. After securing his first show, which was picked up by Time Out Magazine, he was soon put to work shooting celebrity covers for the biggest gay magazines, including Attitude, Boyz, and QX International.

At the same time, he was immersed in the colorful London gay scene where his favorite subjects thrived: drag queens. Always drawn to the art form and people he considered kindred spirits, his passion for drag photography took him to Sydney in 2005 where the drag scene was vibrant and exciting. "It was as if I had arrived home."

Having been a "child of drag," as he describes it, "who was shamed out of doing what I loved," it was a scene that made sense to him and a visual that inspired him. So, he set to work photographing the most interesting queens he could find, and it was to be the start of a love affair with drag, showing the world the art form through his eyes. Very quickly gaining a reputation as someone to watch in the drag world, for the next few years, Magnus divided his time between celebrity shoots and drag work, which led him into the hybrid of cabaret world and two long-lasting relationships, one with burlesque superstar Immodesty Blaize and another with cabaret queen Meow Meow.

Relocating to LA in 2011, Hastings found himself increasingly drawn into the drag world with its lack of censorship and willingness to try things and take chances, and so started to work on his project Why Drag? The project quickly found momentum, and a show opened in New York in 2014 to much critical acclaim. This led to a book deal with Chronicle Books and the release of the book Why Drag? in 2016, which went straight to the top of the portrait photography charts, with Sir Elton John exclaiming, "This is the best f*cking photography book in years!" Hastings' reputation as the leader in the field of drag photography led to his appearance as a celebrity guest photographer on RuPaul's Drag Race in 2015, as well as a recurring judge on the first two seasons of The Boulet Brothers Dragula.

In 2018, his new project #Gayface was born, where Hastings invited all facets of the queer community to be photographed within the confines of a 6.5ft x 6.5ft box. Encouraging people to paint the box, bring props, express themselves, or just exist, people embraced the project, and the online launch with 150 boxes all being dropped at the same time on social media was a huge success, the images exploding as if from nowhere with #gayface trending on Twitter. In honor of Pride 2019, Hastings was commissioned to create a moving version of his #gayface project by the West Hollywood Arts Council, which was displayed on three digital billboards along Sunset Blvd for two months.

After photographing close to 1000 boxes in multiple cities, Hastings returned to partner with Chronicle books to create Rainbow Revolution, which takes the best of the images and adds essays from a cross-section of participants to add a new layer to the project exploring people's sexuality and gender identity. The book was released in November 2020 and went to the top of the photography charts in both the US and UK

In 20204 Magnus was invited to show his work in a solo exhibition at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, England. The show , ‘QUEEN” consisted of his most famous drag images combined with new shots and specially commissioned photographs of the local drag queens. There was also a second gallery focusing on 110 of his #Gayface boxes and a life-size interactive box for attendees to photograph themselves. Spread over 650 square meters, it truly was a career highlight , with floor to ceiling images and bringing in 15,000 people in 4 weeks .

. To date, Magnus' work has appeared on the cover and in many magazines around the world, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Slate, NYT, Los Angeles Magazine and Galore, to name a few. Magnus currently lives in West Hollywood, California, with his puppy Juno.