Diverse Humanity: An LGBTQ+ Photobook Series
Showing all 17 results
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Shine
Portraits in Queer Resilience, Embracing New Dimensions$21.99A deeply personal work of photojournalism from one of Britain’s most exciting young photographers working today
“The power and intensity of Asafe’s work are recognizable from the first instance of setting eyes on his images. The activism that underpins it makes for an even more impactful aesthetic.” —Izabela Radwanska Zhang, editorial director of British Journal of Photography
For many queer people, exile begins at home. The search for safety and freedom to express themselves drives millions of LGBTQIA+ people across borders. Their stories are full of contrasts—between isolation and community, freedom and nostalgia.
In their stunning compositions, photographer Asafe Ghalib explores the identities of members of the LGBTQIA+ immigrant community in Britain with striking beauty and poise. Brought up in a religious family, Ghalib draws from their own experience of leaving Brazil behind to depict the rich lives of their subjects who live at the intersections of multiple cultures. Their work, which evokes black-and-white newspaper photographs and classic portraiture that has been present since the dawn of photography, immortalizes the lives of a community that has been misrepresented for decades.
The latest in a groundbreaking series of photobooks that highlight queer lives and communities around the world, Shine invites the viewer to enter the world of Britain’s many queer communities and, in doing so, to challenge common misconceptions and prejudices about LGBTQIA+ people. An act of both confrontation and pride, this book is also an exploration of immigration as a human right and, above all, a celebration of the triumphs of a defiant community.
Shine was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Transcend
Freedom to Love$21.99The latest in the groundbreaking series of photobooks on LGBTQ life around the world, an intimate, personal collection of photographs on the queer community in the U.S.
Recent years have seen an unprecedented push by state legislatures to pass anti-LGBTQ bills across the United States. Hundreds of laws, mainly attempting to ban access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth and to ban discussions of gender identity and sexuality from high school curriculums, have been introduced this year alone—a new and deeply troubling record.
In these times visual representation of queer love is as important as it has ever been, and in Transcend, award-winning Taiwanese American photographer Sandra Chen Weinstein showcases some of the work from a long career of photographing the LGBTQ community, especially the trans community. Weinstein’s own child recently came out as queer, trans, and non-binary at the age of twenty-eight, and the core of the book is a series of photographs that focuses on their relationship.
A gorgeously packaged, full-color book, Transcend challenges many assumptions about LGBTQ life in the United States and is an enduring visual testament to the strength, resilience, and joy of the queer community in the face of discrimination, inequality, and violence.
Transcend was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS). -
Ordinary People
Portraits from LGBTQ Armenia, Georgia, and Russia$21.99An inspiring and beautifully produced series of photo-portraits of LGBTQ Russians living in an increasingly homophobic Russia
Do we want children from elementary school to be imposed with things that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want them to be taught that instead of men and women, there are supposedly some other genders and to be offered sex-change surgeries?—President Vladimir Putin
In late 2022, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on, President Vladimir Putin signed new legislation cracking down on LGBTQ communities. Almost ten years earlier, Russia had enacted a federal law that prohibited the promotion of “non-traditional sexual values”—seen as Western values—to anyone under the age of eighteen. Known by many as the “gay propaganda law,” it has been used to silence any public discussion or positive messaging about LGBTQ issues in any place or format accessible to minors, including the media and online. The new legislation expands on the 2013 law to cover all ages and all media, causing many to fear for a new wave of homophobic violence.
In Ordinary People, Ksenia Kuleshova, a rising star in the world of photography, has taken a series of color portraits, accompanied by short interviews, of LGBTQ Russians who, despite the relentless homophobia from politicians, religious leaders, and the media, remain open about their sexuality and seek happiness and joy in their everyday lives. Kuleshova also looks beyond Russia’s borders to people in former Soviet states, many of which have taken their lead from Russia’s homophobic policies. Powerful and intimate, Ordinary People is a moving and ultimately joyful testament to the survival and resilience of the LGBTQ community in one of the most oppressive countries in the world.
Ordinary People was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Believable
The Portraits of Lola Flash$21.99Named one of the Best Photo Books of the Year by Smithsonian
A stunning full-color collection of photographs, old and new, by the renowned photographer and LGBTQIA+ activist Lola Flash
Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics, celebrated photographer Lola Flash has become known for images that manage to both interrogate and transcend preconceptions about gender, sex, and race. Spurred by their experience as an active member of ACT UP and ART+ during the AIDS epidemic in New York City, their art is profoundly connected to their activism, fueling a lifelong commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of queer communities, especially queer communities of color.
The seventeenth volume in a groundbreaking series of LGBTQ-themed photobooks from The New Press, Believable draws on the extraordinary body of work that Flash has created over four decades, from their iconic “Cross Colour” images from the 1980s and early 1990s to their more recent photography, which used the framework of Afrofuturism to examine the intersection of Black culture and technoculture and science fiction. Also included in the book are portraits that explore the impact of skin pigmentation on Black identity and consciousness, as well as people who have challenged traditional concepts of gender and trendsetters in the urban underground cultural scene.
In all their images, their passion for photography and their belief in the medium’s ability to provide agency and freedom and initiate change shine through. For the first time, Believable brings together the remarkable work of this queer art icon.
Believable was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Belonging
Portraits from LGBTQ Thailand$21.99A stunning collection of photographs of the LGBTQ community in Thailand, from one of the world’s most renowned photographers
Steve McCurry is the artist behind some of the most iconic images in contemporary photography. His 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula (“the Afghan girl”) on the cover of National Geographic remains widely recognized to this day. Now McCurry turns his attention to Thailand as part of a series of photobooks on LGBTQ communities around the world.
Thailand has long had the reputation as one of the most gay-friendly destinations in Asia, particularly Bangkok with its nightlife and its relative openness and safety. While this may be true for tourists and expats, the idea of Thailand as a haven for LGBTQ people and for same-sex couples, heavily promoted by the tourist industry, does not necessarily extend to Thais themselves. While Thailand is home to the largest LGBTQ communities in Asia, the reality for them is less accepting. Discrimination and exclusion targeting LGBTQ people continues despite a nominally progressive stance on inclusion, and same-sex marriage remains illegal.
Against this backdrop, McCurry’s lushly colored photographs take us into the vibrant LGBTQ community in Bangkok, and this beautifully packaged, affordably priced book gives us a series of close to one hundred moving and intimate portraits of people who are no longer welcome in the community in which they grew up, but who have forged a new life and a new meaning of family in the queer community.
Belonging was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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This Is How The Heart Beats
LGBTQ East Africa$21.99Part of a groundbreaking series of photobooks on LGBTQ communities around the world, a moving portrait of a group of queer East Africans who fled their home countries for the United States
Same-sex relations are illegal in thirty-eight African countries, often under colonial-era laws. One of the most dangerous countries has been Uganda, which is attempting to pass an Anti-Homosexuality Bill (commonly known as the “Kill the Gays” bill) that seeks to broaden the criminalization of same-sex relations, making it punishable by life imprisonment and, in some instances, death.
This Is How the Heart Beats is a portrait by acclaimed photographer Jake Naughton of a group of East Africans who have fled unimaginable abuse in their homeland for the United States. One couple, Sulait and his boyfriend, had been tortured in prison in the months after the anti-homosexuality bill had been proposed and, on their release, had made their way to Kenya, where they were attacked by a mob of machete-wielding men. It was only after years in hiding that many such refugees have been resettled in the United States.
With an introduction by journalist Jacob Kushner and a foreword by Ugandan queer activist Ruth Muganzi, This Is How the Heart Beats is a record of LGBTQ forced migration unlike any other, following this community from its darkest moments to an uncertain future. At a time of great uncertainty for both LGBTQ and refugee rights, this work illuminates the stakes for those at the center of a firestorm.
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Dark Tears
LGBTQ Resilience in Latin America$21.99A beautifully packaged and profound exploration of human desire and queer sexuality in Latin America by the acclaimed Argentinian photographer Claudia Jares
In Dark Tears, award-winning Argentinian photographer and performance artist Claudia Jares takes her lens to the reality of queer experience in Argentina, Venezuela, and across Latin America, exploring questions of sexuality, religion, and identity with the raw eroticism that is the hallmark of her style. Here she tells the stories of a number of people struggling to come to terms with their identity in a region that, despite much progress in LGBTQ rights in recent years, still moves to a strongly conservative Christian heartbeat that condemns same-sex relations and reveres the institution of the heteronormative family.
Drawing on the queer traditions of burlesque and drag, Dark Tears is a journey into an interior erotic landscape as it profiles a number of different couples—gay, lesbian, gender nonconforming—to delve into the hidden corners and diverse configurations of human desire as it conflicts with more staid, traditional values. A balance of celebrating acceptance and recalling the clandestine, furtive history of queer sexuality, these explicit black-and-white and color images are a challenge to the viewer as voyeur, but also an invitation to enter with empathy into the intimate world of Jares’s subjects.
Dark Tears was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Lives in Transition
LGBTQ Serbia$21.99Part of the ongoing series of photobooks published with the Arcus Foundation and Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios on queer communities around the world, a stunning portrait of a community battling homophobia in Serbia
In June 2001, Serbia witnessed its first gay pride parade in history in Belgrade’s central square. It was a short-lived march, as an ultranationalist mob quickly descended on the participants, chanting homophobic slurs and injuring dozens. For years afterward, fear of violence prevented further marches, and when, in October 2010, the next pride march finally went ahead, it again devolved into violence as anti-gay rioters, firing shots and hurling petrol bombs, fought the police. It was only in 2014 that a pride march was held uninterrupted, albeit under heavy police protection.
In Lives in Transition, photographer Slobodan Randjelovic captures the struggles and successes of twenty LGBTQ people living throughout Serbia—a conservative, religious country where, despite semi-progressive LGBTQ protection laws, homophobia fueled by religious authorities and right-wing political parties remains deeply entrenched. In a country where lack of employment opportunity and hostile families frequently drive queer people into poverty and isolation, these individuals have struggled to build a community that will offer solace, protection, and even joy. Lives in Transition portrays remarkable and inspiring resilience in the human struggle against a repressive social environment and demonstrates how friendship and community can help people shape their own futures.
Lives in Transition was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Revealing Selves
Transgender Portraits from Argentina$21.99A beautifully photographed exploration of what it means to be transgender in Argentina—part of a series of photobooks on LGBTQ communities around the world
Argentina was the first nation in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. It also passed legislation making it one of the most advanced countries worldwide in terms of transgender rights—the culmination of a long battle fought by LGBTQ support groups.
In the beautifully packaged and affordably priced Revealing Selves, award-winning photographer Kike Arnal collaborates with individuals in Argentinian transgender communities, living side by side with them and documenting their day-to-day lives in a series of strikingly intimate color and black-and-white images. Among them are a former sex worker who is now a recognized leader of the Buenos Aires trans community, a single trans mother of three teenage girls whose partner had fallen victim to drug abuse, and the residents of the Hotel Gondolin, a small, derelict family hotel now inhabited by a few dozen trans women.
Despite the progress, the situation in Argentina is far from perfect. Trans people are still discriminated against and subject to verbal violence, physical assault, and police abuse. Of interest to LGBTQ activists and photography enthusiasts alike, Revealing Selves is both a celebration of the trans community in Argentina and a clear-eyed examination of what remains to be done in the struggle for trans rights.
Revealing Selves was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Out
LGBTQ Poland$21.95PAPERBACK ORIGINAL From an award-winning documentary photographer, the first book of its kind to portray the LGBTQ community in contemporary Poland
Few in the Polish LGBTQ community could have foreseen how quickly this deeply conservative and Catholic country would change since it joined the European Union. Back in 2004, gay rights marches were banned in Warsaw and homosexuality was a taboo subject. Since then, as the economy has grown, the LGBTQ community has become more widely accepted.
In OUT, award-winning Warsaw-based photographer Maciek Nabrdalik, whose work has been published in Smithsonian, L’Espresso, Stern, Newsweek, and the New York Times, takes us deep into this community. Exploring issues of identity and citizenship and taking its inspiration from the passport photo format, OUT features dozens of formal portraits of writers, artists, and everyday people working in a variety of occupations from across Poland. Each portrait is accompanied by a short interview and is shaded to indicate how comfortable that person is with revealing their own sexuality publicly.
Intimate and profoundly humane, OUT is a testament to the great strides that can be made in the struggle for LGBTQ rights in a short space of time—a document that will be inspiring to other nations where the queer community does not enjoy the same freedoms.
OUT was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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The Kids
The Children of LGBTQ Parents in the USA$21.95PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
A stunning new photobook featuring more than fifty portraits of children brought up by gay parents in America, sixth in a groundbreaking series that looks at LGBTQ communities around the worldJudges, academics, and activists keep wondering how children are impacted by having gay parents. Maybe it’s time to ask the kids. For the past four years, award-winning photographer Gabriela Herman, whose mother came out when Herman was in high school and was married in one of Massachusetts’ first legal same-sex unions, has been photographing and interviewing children and young adults with one or more parent who identify as lesbian, gay, trans, or queer. Building on images featured in a major article for the New York Times Sunday Review and The Guardian and working with the Colage organization, the only national organization focusing on children with LGBTQ parents, The Kids brings a vibrant energy and sensitivity to a wide range of experiences.
Some of the children Herman photographed were adopted, some conceived by artificial insemination. Many are children of divorce. Some were raised in urban areas, other in the rural Midwest and all over the map. These parents and children juggled silence and solitude with a need to defend their families on the playground, at church, and at holiday gatherings.
This is their story.
The Kids was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Edges of the Rainbow
LGBTQ Japan$21.95PAPERBACK ORIGINAL An intimate photographic glimpse into the queer world behind the closed doors of modern Japanese society
The LGBTQ community in Japan has faced its challenges. Even as some religious and warrior orders have a long and recognized tradition of same-sex love, to be considered different, to be “the nail that sticks out,” makes coming out difficult.
Despite the conservative strain within Japanese society that encourages the LGBTQ community to remain unseen, a welcome change is happening on the ground. A number of queer cultural figures are opening up new horizons, and a growing majority of Japanese people believe that homosexuality should be an integral and open part of society.
The latest in a series of beautiful, affordable photobooks that look at LGBTQ communities around the world, Edges of the Rainbow is a photographic celebration of the queer community in Japan. In a set of more than 150 color and black-and-white photographs, acclaimed photographer Michel Delsol and journalist Haruku Shinozaki have brought together a fascinating group of individuals to create an unforgettable and uplifting look at a proud and resilient community on the margins of Japanese society.Edges of the Rainbow was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Delhi
Communities of Belonging$21.95Delhi offers a stunning series of more than 150 full-color documentary photographs and companion first-person texts, which together offer an unprecedented portrait of LGBTQ people’s lives in India today. Focusing on Delhi, noted photographers Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh chronicle the halting emergence of networks of men and women living under the shadow of stigma and criminalized behavior—in a country where anti-sodomy laws dating back to the British Empire were recently struck down, only to be reaffirmed in a surging wave of homophobia.
The photographs in this lavishly presented volume reflect the photographers’ celebrated capacity for entering into lives rarely seen. In Delhi, we are invited into the daily routines, work, homes, and intimate lives of subjects from different backgrounds—from urban professionals to day laborers. A visually arresting document in its own right, Delhi presents American readers with a starting point for understanding the profound struggles for recognition by India’s LGBTQ community.
Delhi was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS). -
Pride & Joy
Taking the Streets of New York City$21.95 – $21.99A celebration of the New York City Pride Parade documented in a dazzling series of photographs, with a major introductory essay by comedian and activist Kate ClintonMore than forty years have passed since members of the LGBTQ community took to the streets of New York City on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots for the world’s first march for gay rights. From its modest, though ambitious, beginnings, the annual event has grown into an all-encompassing celebration of queer culture, drawing more than a million people. It has also come to mean many things to many people. For some, Pride has become too commercial or irrelevant as queer culture has become mainstream. To others, the festivities should be less about the politics of the gay rights movement and more about a joyful celebration of what it means to be queer.
But for anyone with a passion for freedom and for vivid, thoughtful photography, Pride & Joy—by noted photographer Jurek Wajdowicz with an introduction by the nationally known satirist and activist Kate Clinton and published in the wake of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage—is an ode to this New York institution. Energetic, colorful, and irreverent, these images are a playful confirmation of equality. Incorporating portraits of marchers and bystanders and leading figures in the LGTBQ community, these photographs revel in the rich diversity of the parade. Exquisitely presented, the book includes interviews with members of the queer community about their relationship to the march, offering a startling variety of responses to this integral part of New York life. Pride & Joy is an inspiration not only to the queer community but to all those still fighting for their basic human rights.
The fourth in a major new series of LGBT-themed photography books, Pride & Joy is a visual treat for photography lovers, an inspiration for the global queer community, and a singular tribute to New York City.
Pride & Joy was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS). -
Five Bells
Being LGBT in Australia$21.95 – $21.99In a country known as one of the most queer-friendly nations in the world, most Australians support LGBTI rights, federal laws protect queer people from discrimination, transgender Australians are recognized legally as their preferred gender, and the renown of Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival has reached across its borders.
The eight visual narratives that make up award-winning Australian photographer Jenny Papalexandris’s intimate and thematically rich Five Bells offers a celebration of queer life, giving the reader a visual portrait of everyday life among queer-identifying people, from joyful images of weddings and family gatherings to more contemplative portraits of rural youth and asylum seekers. In so doing, the book presents a series of neither caricatures nor stereotypes but of individuals—active agents in the universal quest for happiness, intimacy, fulfillment, respect, and a sense of belonging. This is the human face of the queer community in Australia, and these beautifully crafted and life-affirming photographs, in black-and-white and in color, show us the personal and psychological landscape of what it means to be part of a community that is as vibrant as it is diverse.
Five Bells was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS). -
Lyudmila and Natasha
Russian Lives$21.95 – $21.99The photojournalist Misha Friedman is renowned for his efforts to capture life in contemporary Russia, documenting subjects as varied as political corruption, the dangers of coal mining, the tuberculosis epidemic, and the Bolshoi Ballet. In publications ranging from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the New Yorker, Friedman’s grimly evocative black-and-white images—“intimate, behind-the-scenes photos” (Time)—have been credited with capturing moments of intense pathos, bleak existence, and human dignity. He has received multiple international awards for his “unflinching” lens and his intrepid reporting.
For his new collection of photographs, Lyudmila and Natasha, Friedman trains his lens on a gay couple living on Saint Petersburg, offering a series of intimate snapshots of their relationship as it unfolds over the course of a year. Faced with a hostile political climate, financial difficulties, and often unstable living arrangements, the subjects of this stunning book reveal the possibilities for love in the most uncertain of times. With the fabled city of Saint Petersburg as its backdrop, Lyudmila and Natasha powerfully evokes both a vital place and the people who call it home.Lyudmila and Natasha was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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Bordered Lives
Transgender Portraits from Mexico$21.95A richly evocative collection of photographs by internationally renowned photographer Kike Arnal, Bordered Lives seeks to push back against the transphobic caricatures that have perpetuated discrimination against the transgender community in Mexico. Despite some important advances in recognizing and protecting the rights of its transgender community, including legislating against hate crimes targeting transgender people, discrimination still persists, and the majority of the violent attacks against the LGBT community are against transgender women.
In the highly personal profiles that make up Bordered Lives, Arnal takes us into the lives of seven individuals in and around Mexico City. He shows them going about their day-to-day lives: getting ready in the morning, interacting with family and friends, and devoting their lives to helping others in the transgender community.
Deeply honest, sensitive, and humane, Bordered Lives challenges society’s preconceived notions of sexuality, gender, and beauty not only in Mexico but across the globe.Bordered Lives was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).
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