Recently, I was asked by a friend at BNY Mellon to showcase some of my portraits of individuals and couples from the LGBT community in conjunction with their partnership with PFLAG in honor of Pride Month. My friend, Peter, biked with my husband and I across Europe in 2002 in the European AIDS Vaccine Ride - 575 miles in seven days with a $5k minimum fundraising goal to help fund research for an AIDS vaccine - and we had kept in touch ever since; it was a pretty intense bonding experience! Peter had seen my Boston Authors Project show at GrubStreet, and asked if I could do something similar for BNY Mellon's partnership with PFLAG (Parents, Families, Friends and Allies united with LGBTQ people to move equality forward) - of course I said yes.
For this project, I photographed Joseph, an architect, and Manuel, one of my former students at MIT, now a scientist, along with a few others - I could only choose a couple of these for the show, so I'm expanding a bit here. Both Manuel and Joe are incredibly funny guys, smart, and a joy to be around - Manuel has a particular touch for interacting with kids of all ages (my daughter snagged him as I took Joe to the studio first), and Joe has a wicked collection of expressions that were just a joy to shoot, as well as similar literary tastes - everything from mindfulness to Orson Scott Card (we both enjoy the fiction, though neither of us share that author's politics). My goal with this collection of photographs was not only to reveal each man's loveliness and character but to also to describe the warmth and joy of their relationship.
