“Our society always says that being LGBT is a great sin. Allah cursed them all, but these sentences from Quran show different view of Islam which denies all the dogmas in secular Azerbaijani society”.Says Gulara Azimzadeh, head of the “Peace for LGBT” organisation:
“The photo-session “Z-53” represents religious, national and legal aspects of Azerbaijani LGBT people’s lives. Those photos are a message and a protest to the unbearable levels of discrimination from the homophobic society towards LGBT people. The fear for our lives derived during the making of “Z-53” did not suppress our demand for freedom of expression. For years our existence has been ignored – today we say “We exist”! Despite all the shaming, humiliations for years, and making us believe we were doing wrong - we accept our homosexual nature, we are not ashamed of who we are! You did not give us the rights to take them away. Do not try to fit everybody under the same figure! It is time to accept us – the people “different” from you.”Unsurprisingly, as per organisers, this action generated a “huge wave of hatred” towards them, as is always the case whenever LGBT activists in the South Caucasus lower a threshold of visibility by their actions.
Transgenders are a big part of my project about LGBT people in Armenia. Photographing transgender sex workers was a shock at first— unreal or, more accurately, surreal. I was shaken: they weren’t just a found object in photographic terms. It was a phenomenon that contradicted and negated all my previously held notions of man and woman.[Read the full interview with Nazik Armenakyan here: http://www.fotoevidence.com/nazik-armenakian]
“I am a woman who is not accepted by the society,” out of all the women I photographed, none would say this or anything similar. Yet every time any of them walks along the street people look with amazement. And I would look at them just as everyone else. There was strange interest and respect I felt towards them, so I decided to get to know them closer, talk to them, and take their photo. (photo story)Below is a video report from the exhibit by RFE/RL Armenia service (AM):
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