Lives: A Global Perspective

The photographs in this series comprise a body of commissioned work by some of the world’s most gifted contemporary photojournalists, conceived by accomplished art photographer Jurek Wajdowicz with Arcus Foundation president and founder Jon Stryker.

Stryker is active in social justice causes both as an activist and philanthropist. Wajdowicz is a frequent creative collaborator with household names in social change. Together, they set out to explore and illuminate the most intimate and personal dimensions of self, still too often treated as taboo: gender identity and expression and sexual orientation. The books reveal the amazing multiplicity in these core aspects of our being, played out against a vast array of distinct and varied cultures and customs from around the world.

Photography is a powerful medium for communication that can transform our understanding and awareness of the world we live in. We believe the photographs in this series have the potential of altering perceptions of the arbitrary boundaries that we draw between others and ourselves and celebrating the broad spectrum of possibility for how we live our lives with acceptance and love of one another.

Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits from Mexico

A richly evocative collection of photographs by internationally renowned photographer Kike Arnal, Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits from Mexico 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 violent attacks against the LGBT community are against transgender women.

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Lyudmila & Natasha: Russian Lives

For his new collection of photographs, Lyudmila and Natasha: Russian Lives, Misha Friedman trains his lens on a gay couple living in 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.

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Five Bells: Being LGBT in Australia

The eight visual narratives that make up award-winning Australian photographer Jenny Papalexandris’ intimate and thematically rich Five Bells: Being LGBT in Australia offer a celebration of queer life, giving the world 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, respect, and a sense of belonging. This is the human face of the queer community in Australia, and these beautifully crafted 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.

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Pride & Joy: Taking the Streets of New York City

With an introduction by satirist and activist Kate Clinton and published in the wake of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, Pride & Joy is an ode to what is now a New York institution–a true photographic celebration that captures the spirit of this remarkable gay pride event. Energetic, colorful, and irreverent, these vivid images are a playful and moving affirmation of equality. Noted photographer Jurek Wajdowicz journeys deep into the heart of the march, offering portraits of marchers, bystanders, and leading figures in the LGBT community, images that 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, chronicling a startling variety of responses to this integral part of New York life.

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Delhi: Communities of Belonging

In this groundbreaking series of photographs, Delhi: Communities of Belonging, acclaimed photographers Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh offer an unprecedented portrait of LGBTQ people’s lives in India today, chronicling the halting emergence of networks of men and women living 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.

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