The project is a campaign by the U.S. nonprofit organization Witness Change and gathers stories from LGBTQI* people about discrimination and persecution, empowerment, pride, and living beyond life. The selection of stories focuses on those 72 states where LGBTQI* people are criminalized. But there are also stories from Great Britain, Australia or the USA.
About the selection of stories, the website states:
“Those who are photographed through Robin’s global storytelling campaign choose how they want to pose, what to wear and how to present themselves. They hand write their stories and letters to be shared with the world. The project also invites the LGBTQI+ community to share their own stories through a global social media campaign and through local anti-stigma campaigns, developed in conjunction with the Witness Change team.”
At the same time, photographs and their use as (powerful) components of a media narrative are, in our opinion, also to be viewed critically in general. This is especially true of the Witness Change website linked above. Thus, questions about power relations, (foreign) representation, stereotypes, essentialization, and economic interests are important, especially in the case of multimedia formats with powerful images, such as those produced by this organization.
This link therefore provides a selection of articles that address these and other issues in a variety of ways.
For those who are new to this topic, we recommend our brochure “With colonial greetings…”, which can be downloaded free of charge here.