I’m really grateful to be here and the
reason I’m so grateful is actually
you’re really helping me out I made a
promise to the people whose photograph
photographs who you’ll see tonight I
promised them that their stories would
be heard and you’re helping me to
fulfill their promise and so for that
I’m I’m deeply grateful the last time
that I was here in the u.s. talking
about where love is illegal was soon
after the shootings in Orlando and that
event was you know shocking of course
and as was to everyone here I’m sure it
wasn’t until a couple of days later that
it really hit me
I received a post on my Facebook page
from a friend of mine he sent me this
clip of CNN’s Anderson Cooper reading
out the names of the deceased maybe some
of you saw that he read their names and
they showed a photo of each of those who
are killed and they had a little story
about them and what they you know meant
to their families and friends and it was
really really deeply moving and suddenly
those the numbers became people and
suddenly I felt a connection to them and
the the victims were made real the
mission of this project where loves
illegals about making connections
it’s about amplifying lesbian gay
transgender queer intersex voices they
have been silenced by bigotry and by
hearing their stories we get to make
real their survival and by understanding
what they’ve survived we maybe get some
insight and some understanding of the
true ugliness and impact of homophobia
and transphobia so tonight I’m going to
talk to you a little bit about where
love is legal the campaign I’ll talk to
you a bit about the making other
photographs because I know there are
some people in this audience who are
interested in that but what’s just as if
not more important to me is that you
meet some of the individuals who are
brave enough to be involved in this work
this is Buju
now BJ is covering his face because he’s
afraid
in fact bouge isn’t really his name he
asked that we hide his identity because
who he is means that he can be put to
death
I met bouge and four other young men
shortly after they had been released
from prison
they’d languished there for 40 days they
were tortured in jail and they were
lashed with a whip in court fortunately
their case was dismissed but the
community which they lived we’re not
satisfied with the verdict they waited
outside the courtroom armed with rocks
intending to stone bouge and other young
men to death bouge went back into the
courtroom his place of torture now a
century until the crowd dispersed but
they’re suffering didn’t end there they
went back to their families who in turn
ostracized them bouge fell ill and a
relative came to him and said God should
take your life because you have caused
such shame to the family you know their
their physical scars would heal by that
rejection from their own flesh and blood
cut deepest so what was a crime that
bouge committed what could possibly have
him tortured by the state nearly lynched
by his community and abandoned by his
family he’s gay and you know one would
think that we would have moved past this
barbaric notion that one should be
killed for who they are attracted to
that to be LGBT is unnatural immoral or
unholy and while there are now
thankfully 780 million people living in
countries where same-sex relationships
are legal
there are 2.8 billion people living in
countries where consensual same-sex acts
are a crime so prior to starting this
work where I was illegal like many
people you know I was I was appalled by
homophobia and transphobia but like the
Orlando shooting
it wasn’t until these abstract concepts
the abstract concepts of homophobia and
transphobia it wasn’t till they became
real there through meeting these people
there
I had a any real understanding of course
hearing their stories cannot be compared
in any way to live in their experience
but in a small way when I heard what
they’ve been through
I felt it so trying to get people to
feel is what I’ve been trying to do with
my work for the last 15 years since I
left my home country of New Zealand I’ve
been trying to do that through
photography photography as a storyteller
and as a human rights campaigner and I
don’t many different kinds of work like
sexual violence work about Street
Children and famine and conflict and
dictatorship and displacement and
environmental degradation and illegal
mining and drugs and prisons and disease
and a large body of work which I’ve been
doing since 2011 on mental health and
African countries and crisis which I
called condemned now prior to starting
this work when during all that other
work that I showed you before seeing
this work here you know I’m starting to
question my role as a documentarian I
felt that I was making had made the
beginnings of strong and important and
work that could have purpose in fact I
was one of the great motivators for me
when I started out as a photographer I
had this belief like many young
photographers I think go into
photojournalism that my work could be
important and that my work could make a
difference and I thought that maybe
naively perhaps that my work by being
published would make people sit up and
take action and sometimes my work did
that but mostly it did not and it made
me deeply frustrated it was really
important for me that my work felt like
it was meaningful so when I started this
work on mental health and African
countries and crisis I started it with a
mindset
that my work could no longer be made
solely to raise awareness that it
couldn’t just be to illustrate an
article alone I was determined that it
would make a difference and I started
this work on mental health in South
Sudan
I went there to cover a referendum for
independence and came away with a story
about a country which was in a time of
hope it had massive challenges to deal
with not least of all the psychological
impact of you know 20 years of conflict
and almost completely destroyed
infrastructure and a country where there
were next to no medical professionals
and no facilities for people with mental
health problems and I move through this
so and in this environment the prison
had become a place to warehouse people
with mental health problems and I moved
through this nightmare of a place you
know understanding that I was seeing a
really devastating human rights issue
and you know that it was really a crime
against the society’s most vulnerable
and voiceless people and I moved through
here thinking that if the world could
see what I was seeing they wouldn’t
allow this I was thinking I could stop
this with my camera I came across one
young man by himself at the end of a
cell you know naked and shackled with
this thick colonial-style chain around
his ankle to the filthy floor and as
soon as I saw him I thought this is the
picture this is the one that will get
people’s attention
I now most of the people in the prison
as I moved around were able to let me
know one way or another if it was okay
to take their photograph or not but he
couldn’t he neither looked nor spoke to
me in my mind I was thinking okay I’m
here to document a grave human rights
offense and that’s the most important
thing um but I paused here was a
vulnerable young man whose dignity had
been taken away from him his liberty had
been taken away from him and I was
concerned was I abusing his human rights
further if this was me if this was my
brother or if this was my son would I be
okay with this image appearing on the
front page
of a newspaper so all of these things
went through my mind as I was crouching
down over this filthy floor with a
camera raised to my eye in the
conclusion that I came to because
obviously I took the picture is that the
only way that this image was going to be
okay is if it was made to really make a
difference in the lives of this man and
the lives of people like him not raised
away and it’s not illustrate an article
but really make a difference so that day
and in fact that moment was
transformational for me I moved from
being a my intention changed from a
photographer hoping to change to make
change happen to photographer making
change happen so I need to say right now
because I know this photographers here
that and most people in the photo
industry that I think that there is
great value in photography and
storytelling just for the sake of making
pictures and for the sake of telling
stories and for recording history and
for raising awareness those are all
really valuable things but for me it
wasn’t enough I came to this conclusion
and that is that with witnessing comes
responsibility and with privilege comes
a moral obligation to people less
fortunate than ourselves
I decided raising awareness raising
awareness was not enough and I decided
that I could no longer pretend that
making change happen or someone else’s
job so I tell you this story about this
journey because to provide some context
and hopefully some understanding of my
mindset when I started to embark on this
work called where love is illegal so
while I was doing all this work mostly
in Africa I was becoming aware of a rise
in homophobia and transphobia and this
oppressive sometimes violent reaction I
think came from these from you know
conservative elements of of many African
societies which I believe was born out
of enlarged part out of the rise and
visibility of
quality rights here in the US and in
Western Europe
so you know in this globalized world
increase freedoms here can be seen as a
threat to those who would deny the
freedoms for people in their own
countries and then we you have to
combine that with with with the fact
that you would have have conservative
Christian elements in this country who
were perhaps felt like they losing sway
and started to pivot towards other parts
of the world and started and you know we
had these evangelicals sadly going to
places like Uganda and Fanning the
flames of bigotry encouraged by these
evangelicals in Uganda bills like the
kill the gays bill was bought into court
and passed into law so but we shouldn’t
think that the this form of bigotry was
tired entirely imported there were local
newspapers like red pepper who delighted
in trolling Facebook accounts and taking
people’s photographs and putting them on
the front page to expose in this case
you get as 200 top homos unsurprisingly
has happened in many countries with this
kind of reporting in with these laws the
there was a sharp rise in in homophobic
attacks and the same homophobic
arguments which you know I think many of
us heard in a less tolerant era in this
country were you know came out things
like you know the supposed threats that
gay men have towards children it was
particularly disturbing to see young
kids marched out in support of
homophobic laws as well but later when
aid was withdrawn from the country in
just a couple of days before President
Museveni of Uganda was due to come to
this city to meet President Obama the
law was taken off the books by a
technicality so while we have you know a
lot of lot of people will say that
international pressure doesn’t work
clearly and and the Ugandan government
would deny this too but clearly it did
in this case
so while Uganda got all the
international attention other African
leaders also saw some kind of benefit in
attacking a community that was too
afraid to be able to stand up for their
rights so the Gambian government was
particularly vile and vocal but sadly
across the continent there was
widespread support for these homophobic
laws and it became a very difficult
topic for me with my African friends
certainly people that I respected and
whose time I earn I enjoyed being with
you know almost entirely how these views
that to be LGBT was somehow an African
that it was imported by the West that it
was a threat to the family and most of
everyone here thinks that you know that
those sort of arguments are repulsive
and ridiculous but it’s actually not
that big a step to understand why they
might believe these things after all
there was only one narrative and that
narrative was that LGBT people were
unnatural immoral and unholy and of
course you know we have to also remember
that it hasn’t been that long that we’ve
had more accepting we as countries have
had more accepting views of of LGBT
rights in fact when I was 12 years old
my my mother came to me and said that if
I turned out to be gay that I would
always be welcome in the house but my
special friend never would be 30 years
later my mum’s really proud that I
campaigned for he called he rights so
there’s hope there right this but you
know you have to think what changed her
mind well she was exposed to other
narratives that counted that views those
views and you know that views that said
that LGBT people were not necessarily a
threat to her sons
so my mum gives me hope
societies and people can change but
these LGBTQ narratives are very rarely
heard on the African continent and the
community in large part is silenced and
hidden but this is not just an African
issue clearly half the world makes
consensual same-sex acts a crime and you
know many politicians see homophobia is
a way to garner support from the
conservative elements in their societies
this is the Malaysian Prime Minister
branding LGBT a people LGBT people as
the enemies of Islam and of course Syria
is a particularly dangerous place to be
LGBTQ right now one of the Syrian men
that I met in Lebanon told me that about
the Islamic state when they take over a
new town or new region one of the first
things they do is hunt down gay men or
transgender woman and capture means
almost certain death and Russia
introduced homophobic laws they made
LGBT propaganda a crime which makes you
know campaigning for equality rights
quite dangerous and what followed again
was a spike in attacks on LGBT people in
one group became popular on social media
for baking young gay men with hook up
EPS and then filming them as they as
they beat and abuse them so in all these
places what we have is LGBT voices which
struggle to be heard and hate thrives
where the perpetrators of hate control
the narrative so I saw this single
dangerous narrative strengthen and
become wider and I wondered it as a
storyteller how could I contribute
[Music]
[Music]
Oh
reason I’m so grateful is actually
you’re really helping me out I made a
promise to the people whose photograph
photographs who you’ll see tonight I
promised them that their stories would
be heard and you’re helping me to
fulfill their promise and so for that
I’m I’m deeply grateful the last time
that I was here in the u.s. talking
about where love is illegal was soon
after the shootings in Orlando and that
event was you know shocking of course
and as was to everyone here I’m sure it
wasn’t until a couple of days later that
it really hit me
I received a post on my Facebook page
from a friend of mine he sent me this
clip of CNN’s Anderson Cooper reading
out the names of the deceased maybe some
of you saw that he read their names and
they showed a photo of each of those who
are killed and they had a little story
about them and what they you know meant
to their families and friends and it was
really really deeply moving and suddenly
those the numbers became people and
suddenly I felt a connection to them and
the the victims were made real the
mission of this project where loves
illegals about making connections
it’s about amplifying lesbian gay
transgender queer intersex voices they
have been silenced by bigotry and by
hearing their stories we get to make
real their survival and by understanding
what they’ve survived we maybe get some
insight and some understanding of the
true ugliness and impact of homophobia
and transphobia so tonight I’m going to
talk to you a little bit about where
love is legal the campaign I’ll talk to
you a bit about the making other
photographs because I know there are
some people in this audience who are
interested in that but what’s just as if
not more important to me is that you
meet some of the individuals who are
brave enough to be involved in this work
this is Buju
now BJ is covering his face because he’s
afraid
in fact bouge isn’t really his name he
asked that we hide his identity because
who he is means that he can be put to
death
I met bouge and four other young men
shortly after they had been released
from prison
they’d languished there for 40 days they
were tortured in jail and they were
lashed with a whip in court fortunately
their case was dismissed but the
community which they lived we’re not
satisfied with the verdict they waited
outside the courtroom armed with rocks
intending to stone bouge and other young
men to death bouge went back into the
courtroom his place of torture now a
century until the crowd dispersed but
they’re suffering didn’t end there they
went back to their families who in turn
ostracized them bouge fell ill and a
relative came to him and said God should
take your life because you have caused
such shame to the family you know their
their physical scars would heal by that
rejection from their own flesh and blood
cut deepest so what was a crime that
bouge committed what could possibly have
him tortured by the state nearly lynched
by his community and abandoned by his
family he’s gay and you know one would
think that we would have moved past this
barbaric notion that one should be
killed for who they are attracted to
that to be LGBT is unnatural immoral or
unholy and while there are now
thankfully 780 million people living in
countries where same-sex relationships
are legal
there are 2.8 billion people living in
countries where consensual same-sex acts
are a crime so prior to starting this
work where I was illegal like many
people you know I was I was appalled by
homophobia and transphobia but like the
Orlando shooting
it wasn’t until these abstract concepts
the abstract concepts of homophobia and
transphobia it wasn’t till they became
real there through meeting these people
there
I had a any real understanding of course
hearing their stories cannot be compared
in any way to live in their experience
but in a small way when I heard what
they’ve been through
I felt it so trying to get people to
feel is what I’ve been trying to do with
my work for the last 15 years since I
left my home country of New Zealand I’ve
been trying to do that through
photography photography as a storyteller
and as a human rights campaigner and I
don’t many different kinds of work like
sexual violence work about Street
Children and famine and conflict and
dictatorship and displacement and
environmental degradation and illegal
mining and drugs and prisons and disease
and a large body of work which I’ve been
doing since 2011 on mental health and
African countries and crisis which I
called condemned now prior to starting
this work when during all that other
work that I showed you before seeing
this work here you know I’m starting to
question my role as a documentarian I
felt that I was making had made the
beginnings of strong and important and
work that could have purpose in fact I
was one of the great motivators for me
when I started out as a photographer I
had this belief like many young
photographers I think go into
photojournalism that my work could be
important and that my work could make a
difference and I thought that maybe
naively perhaps that my work by being
published would make people sit up and
take action and sometimes my work did
that but mostly it did not and it made
me deeply frustrated it was really
important for me that my work felt like
it was meaningful so when I started this
work on mental health and African
countries and crisis I started it with a
mindset
that my work could no longer be made
solely to raise awareness that it
couldn’t just be to illustrate an
article alone I was determined that it
would make a difference and I started
this work on mental health in South
Sudan
I went there to cover a referendum for
independence and came away with a story
about a country which was in a time of
hope it had massive challenges to deal
with not least of all the psychological
impact of you know 20 years of conflict
and almost completely destroyed
infrastructure and a country where there
were next to no medical professionals
and no facilities for people with mental
health problems and I move through this
so and in this environment the prison
had become a place to warehouse people
with mental health problems and I moved
through this nightmare of a place you
know understanding that I was seeing a
really devastating human rights issue
and you know that it was really a crime
against the society’s most vulnerable
and voiceless people and I moved through
here thinking that if the world could
see what I was seeing they wouldn’t
allow this I was thinking I could stop
this with my camera I came across one
young man by himself at the end of a
cell you know naked and shackled with
this thick colonial-style chain around
his ankle to the filthy floor and as
soon as I saw him I thought this is the
picture this is the one that will get
people’s attention
I now most of the people in the prison
as I moved around were able to let me
know one way or another if it was okay
to take their photograph or not but he
couldn’t he neither looked nor spoke to
me in my mind I was thinking okay I’m
here to document a grave human rights
offense and that’s the most important
thing um but I paused here was a
vulnerable young man whose dignity had
been taken away from him his liberty had
been taken away from him and I was
concerned was I abusing his human rights
further if this was me if this was my
brother or if this was my son would I be
okay with this image appearing on the
front page
of a newspaper so all of these things
went through my mind as I was crouching
down over this filthy floor with a
camera raised to my eye in the
conclusion that I came to because
obviously I took the picture is that the
only way that this image was going to be
okay is if it was made to really make a
difference in the lives of this man and
the lives of people like him not raised
away and it’s not illustrate an article
but really make a difference so that day
and in fact that moment was
transformational for me I moved from
being a my intention changed from a
photographer hoping to change to make
change happen to photographer making
change happen so I need to say right now
because I know this photographers here
that and most people in the photo
industry that I think that there is
great value in photography and
storytelling just for the sake of making
pictures and for the sake of telling
stories and for recording history and
for raising awareness those are all
really valuable things but for me it
wasn’t enough I came to this conclusion
and that is that with witnessing comes
responsibility and with privilege comes
a moral obligation to people less
fortunate than ourselves
I decided raising awareness raising
awareness was not enough and I decided
that I could no longer pretend that
making change happen or someone else’s
job so I tell you this story about this
journey because to provide some context
and hopefully some understanding of my
mindset when I started to embark on this
work called where love is illegal so
while I was doing all this work mostly
in Africa I was becoming aware of a rise
in homophobia and transphobia and this
oppressive sometimes violent reaction I
think came from these from you know
conservative elements of of many African
societies which I believe was born out
of enlarged part out of the rise and
visibility of
quality rights here in the US and in
Western Europe
so you know in this globalized world
increase freedoms here can be seen as a
threat to those who would deny the
freedoms for people in their own
countries and then we you have to
combine that with with with the fact
that you would have have conservative
Christian elements in this country who
were perhaps felt like they losing sway
and started to pivot towards other parts
of the world and started and you know we
had these evangelicals sadly going to
places like Uganda and Fanning the
flames of bigotry encouraged by these
evangelicals in Uganda bills like the
kill the gays bill was bought into court
and passed into law so but we shouldn’t
think that the this form of bigotry was
tired entirely imported there were local
newspapers like red pepper who delighted
in trolling Facebook accounts and taking
people’s photographs and putting them on
the front page to expose in this case
you get as 200 top homos unsurprisingly
has happened in many countries with this
kind of reporting in with these laws the
there was a sharp rise in in homophobic
attacks and the same homophobic
arguments which you know I think many of
us heard in a less tolerant era in this
country were you know came out things
like you know the supposed threats that
gay men have towards children it was
particularly disturbing to see young
kids marched out in support of
homophobic laws as well but later when
aid was withdrawn from the country in
just a couple of days before President
Museveni of Uganda was due to come to
this city to meet President Obama the
law was taken off the books by a
technicality so while we have you know a
lot of lot of people will say that
international pressure doesn’t work
clearly and and the Ugandan government
would deny this too but clearly it did
in this case
so while Uganda got all the
international attention other African
leaders also saw some kind of benefit in
attacking a community that was too
afraid to be able to stand up for their
rights so the Gambian government was
particularly vile and vocal but sadly
across the continent there was
widespread support for these homophobic
laws and it became a very difficult
topic for me with my African friends
certainly people that I respected and
whose time I earn I enjoyed being with
you know almost entirely how these views
that to be LGBT was somehow an African
that it was imported by the West that it
was a threat to the family and most of
everyone here thinks that you know that
those sort of arguments are repulsive
and ridiculous but it’s actually not
that big a step to understand why they
might believe these things after all
there was only one narrative and that
narrative was that LGBT people were
unnatural immoral and unholy and of
course you know we have to also remember
that it hasn’t been that long that we’ve
had more accepting we as countries have
had more accepting views of of LGBT
rights in fact when I was 12 years old
my my mother came to me and said that if
I turned out to be gay that I would
always be welcome in the house but my
special friend never would be 30 years
later my mum’s really proud that I
campaigned for he called he rights so
there’s hope there right this but you
know you have to think what changed her
mind well she was exposed to other
narratives that counted that views those
views and you know that views that said
that LGBT people were not necessarily a
threat to her sons
so my mum gives me hope
societies and people can change but
these LGBTQ narratives are very rarely
heard on the African continent and the
community in large part is silenced and
hidden but this is not just an African
issue clearly half the world makes
consensual same-sex acts a crime and you
know many politicians see homophobia is
a way to garner support from the
conservative elements in their societies
this is the Malaysian Prime Minister
branding LGBT a people LGBT people as
the enemies of Islam and of course Syria
is a particularly dangerous place to be
LGBTQ right now one of the Syrian men
that I met in Lebanon told me that about
the Islamic state when they take over a
new town or new region one of the first
things they do is hunt down gay men or
transgender woman and capture means
almost certain death and Russia
introduced homophobic laws they made
LGBT propaganda a crime which makes you
know campaigning for equality rights
quite dangerous and what followed again
was a spike in attacks on LGBT people in
one group became popular on social media
for baking young gay men with hook up
EPS and then filming them as they as
they beat and abuse them so in all these
places what we have is LGBT voices which
struggle to be heard and hate thrives
where the perpetrators of hate control
the narrative so I saw this single
dangerous narrative strengthen and
become wider and I wondered it as a
storyteller how could I contribute
[Music]
[Music]
Oh
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