“It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.”
— Paul Strand
Throughout the long and turbulent existence of the United States, history has warned us that the American Dream is a nightmare for anyone who isn’t a white heterosexual cisgender male, so it isn’t surprising that one of the first things white authoritarian bigots do prior to enacting their genocidal policies is to burn the history books. They’re pouring the concrete for The Narrative they’re constructing.
What happens next is dividing American citizens into Us vs. Them, and they do that by amplifying hateful rhetoric about the people they’re brutally objectifying. They lie.
“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies”, Michael Ende observed. “Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”
And when people are transformed into the Other, atrocities are just around the corner because it’s not happening to human beings anymore. Kidnapped Africans are enslaved, Indigenous people are murdered for their land, Black Wall Street is burned down, and Japanese Americans are herded into internment camps and their property stolen. It’s easy to abuse stereotypes because stereotypes don’t bleed. That’s why it’s so important to perpetuate the lies about the marginalized group you want to erase.
We’re seeing the same tactics being used against the LGBTQ community in the amplification of eliminalist rhetoric and punitive legislation, their rationale being that these freaks of nature are lust-crazed predators seeking to victimize America’s children so they must protect themselves by any means necessary.
These are the lies deluded right-wingers tell themselves to justify their cruelty. It’s a different target, but it’s using the same playbook.
This is why Without Apology: Portraits of Pride by photographer Beth Austin is so important. Beth is an award-winning photographer featured in The Nation, The Washington Post, RVA Magazine, WHURK, and on the cover of Sinster Wisdom 106: The Lesbian Body.
“I’ve photographed everything from concerts, album covers, promotional shots for musicians, candid portraits, community events, private parties, small unconventional weddings, food shots for restaurants, and even a training session (with live ammo) for a shooting range”, Austin says proudly.
“Because I love a challenge, I have yet to say no to a project.”
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a photograph can negate a thousand lies. It’s a powerful rebuttal to the vicious propaganda aimed at the LGBTQ community by the usual right-wing suspects.
“You’ve got to tell the world how to treat you,” James Baldwin said. “If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.”
Austin’s beautiful, joyous, and inspirational photographs tell the stories of people who won’t live in their designated closets anymore and refuse to define themselves by the rigid and inhuman standards of homophobic liars. They’re the stories of lawyers, activists, police officers, barbers, schoolteachers, and other everyday heroes who refuse to live fraudulent lives. They’re the stories of our parents, our families, our friends, and our next-door neighbor, our co-workers.
“Photography cannot change the world,” Marc Riboud said, “but it can show the world, especially when it changes.” Lewis Hine exposed the exploitation of children working in unsafe factories. Gordon Parks revealed the lives of black families in Mississippi being brutalized by Jim Crow. Jacob Rils documented the poverty of New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century.
And Beth Austin shows the world the glorious spectrum of human beings in Queer Culture–gay, biracial, and transgender–who won’t be stereotyped.
“I’m hoping that it’ll change some hearts and minds,” Austin says. “Opening hearts and minds across the board, even in our own community because we don’t always understand each other.”
The LGBTQ citizens of the United States want their rightful share of the American Dream, and they’re willing to fight for it. By any means necessary.