"Where Love Is Illegal": Chronicling LGBT Stories of Love and Discrimination (Part 2) | Nat Geo Live

• I was in Lagos, Nigeria in 2014 when I heard about five young men in the north of the country who faced the death penalty for committing gay acts. They were in the Sharia Law controlled part of the country. So I went up to see them. Fortunately, by the time I got up there, their case had been dismissed and they were out of prison, but they were homeless and they were very afraid, and meeting them was really difficult.

Eventually, I convinced them that it was safe, and they came to my hotel to meet me, and I heard each of their stories. That's where I met young Buje. I was deeply moved by these stories of survival, and that's when I started; I left northern Nigeria and started Where Love Is Illegal. I documented these stories of survival of people who had survived persecution from around the world—people who have survived imprisonment and violent attack, attempted murder, and rape.

People who had been ostracized by their family members, who've fled their countries, who've done all they can to hide who they are because they were not considered by their community as normal. I told the stories of 77 different people from 16 different nationalities. Many of the people I’d met were afraid to have their stories told.

This is Sally. She's afraid to show her face because in Syria, the so-called Islamic State are hunting down gay and trans people. They want her dead because she identifies as a woman. The Islamic State don't want you to hear her story. And this J and Q from Uganda. They're hiding their faces because they are a lesbian couple, and they fear their community. Their community doesn't want you to hear their story.

And this is Yves from Cameroon, and Yves is hiding his face because that country arrests more gay men just for being gay than any other country in the continent. Those arresting and torturing the gay men of Cameroon do not want you to hear his story. But the reason that these people are here on the screen behind me, is that they want their story heard.

They shared it because they hoped that by doing so their situation might change for themselves and for people like them. But for some, of course, a photo poses a risk. For some, if they are identified, they could face further persecution or they could even be killed. But many of them wanted to share their stories, and I was really desperate to tell them. But the only way that was going to be possible was if it was done on their terms.

When I met the young men in northern Nigeria, at the time, I was in Lagos, Nigeria, and I was shooting a story for National Geographic, and I was using a large format camera and a Polaroid type film. For those who are not familiar with a large format camera, it's a big camera (chuckles), and it has bellows at the front and a glass plate. You have to put your head under a hood to see everything upside down and around the wrong way.

It's not an easy process but, you know, I was photographing these portraits with this Polaroid film, and I wanted to continue it with this work. Initially, I thought I'd continue with this work because it was an aesthetic decision; I liked the look of it. But it actually took on a— I think an even more important purpose. I gave each of the people that I photographed the option to destroy the picture if they felt that it somehow endangered them.

So, I think that that promise, you know, to hand over the picture and let them take it and destroy it, was a real aid in building trust. But I didn't have to destroy many, and that is because from the outset, I adopted a new way of working. These photographs were going to be a collaboration. Initially that was a— you know, it was the terms of the agreement was that I had to make it do it this way.

But it’s a very different way of working because usually, as photographers, we like to control every— you know, we're kind of control freaks, we like to control every aspect of the shoot. But here I was handing over control to the subjects themselves, and I was allowing them to choose what they would wear, how they would pose, and how they would express themselves.

And of course, how much of their face they wanted to show. I also wanted them to tell their own stories and in their own words, so I asked each of them to write their own testimony, which would accompany their photographs. When we share their testimonies on the website, we always quote them absolutely, directly.

And here for many of them, for the first time, they had control over how they were seen and how they were heard. But of course, handing over control meant that there were sometimes some unexpected results. I’ll tell you the story about a young transgender woman, Jessie. She lives in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, and her young life has been this— one of extreme hardship.

She's been bullied and thrown out of school; she has been raped, and most shockingly, her brother and father, in order to protect the family honor, have on several occasions attempted to murder her. Her story was this list of horrendous abuses, and instinctively I wanted to make a photograph that reflected that story. But she didn't.

So, we start the session and I find a corner of a room with some nice light. I set up my camera on the tripod, and you know, it's this big camera, and I wind up the bellows and I put the lens on the front (audience chuckles) and I have my cassette film, my shutter, my cape, and I asked her to come into the frame.

And she covers her face below these large dark eyes with a scarf in order to protect her identity, and she starts posing. She pushes out her buttock, tilts up her head, and starts to seduce the camera with her eyes. I look through the frame and I think, this is not the photograph I planned to take. (audience laughs) But she is beautiful in front of the camera and strong, and empowered, and I had to remind myself that I was having to give over control; I was to let her allow her to portray herself as she would like.

So, despite this photograph not matching her story, I decided to take the pictures anyway. And afterwards, we were talking about her story some more, and she continued to explain the situation with her family. You know, she's daily at grave risk of being murdered by her own flesh and blood.

And, you know, I listened to her, and I said look, I understand that you identify as a woman, but given the threats that you face, wouldn’t it just be better to pretend to be a boy? And she looked up at me in shock and she said, "I was born this way and I will die this way." And in that moment, I understood.

Her gender identity is fundamental to who she is. I've never had my identity challenged. She's threatened every day because of how she presents herself. With that statement, I understood Jessie's courage and her strength, and her photograph was perfect. This is her story. She sees herself as a beautiful young woman, a sexy young woman, and that is who she wants you to see.

What happened to her is not who she is. So I have this belief, and that is that storytelling is fundamental to the human experience; it's how we communicate with each other and is even how we communicate with ourselves. But of course, the types of stories that we tell are really important, and there are stories that connect and there are stories that divide.

And I think, you know, I also have this belief that, you know, to look for difference in each other is a natural human instinct, and that sometimes for some of us in order to feel like we belong, we sometimes also feel this need to exclude. So I've been trying to tell what I'm calling authentic personal stories, which are stories that come just as much from the people I'm photographing as they do for myself, where their point of view, their voice, and their vision, is included in the construction of the picture.

And I have this belief also that these authentic personal stories have great power to break down these barriers that divide us; barriers of race and religion, and nationality, and gender, and sexuality. I really hope that they help us to see the person and not just a label. And it's my hope that in seeing the person we can see, you know, what connects us.

So I believe that we need more stories that connect, but this work actually is a testament to the destructive power of the other kind of stories. Divisive stories allow the casual discrimination of LGBT people, and divisive stories also allow for their rape and their torture and their murder.

So what happens when all there is is the voice of hate? Bigotry thrives where those discriminated against are silenced, where they are disallowed the right to tell their own stories, and this is repeated time and time again throughout history, with every human rights issue. Where Love is Illegal is made to interrupt the narrative that to be LGBT is an attack on society, against nature, or an insult to God.

It is made to amplify the voices of survivors of discrimination, and allow them to have their stories heard—stories that I believe can connect and stories that I believe can help us to empathize. So I spent a year documenting these stories of survival, and the next important step was to make sure that they were heard.

I wanted to reach the widest audience possible, and I want that audience to feel like they could do more than just read the story, but they could be in some way involved. So, I created some social media accounts, then I created a website, and I started sharing these stories online.

But then I also invited other people from the LGBT community to share their own story, so it wasn't just about my photographs or the stories that I recorded, but people from around the world were able to use, you know, this platform that I'd created. And we started getting stories coming from all over the place; from Italy, from Israel, from Iran, Venezuela, Australia, United States, Jordan, South Africa, Kuwait, South Korea, and many, many other places.

And the goal was to create this global voice of people who refused to be silenced by bigotry. Now these voices, I'm proud to say, you know, have now reached millions around the world. So many of the people that I met while doing this work spoke of how alone they felt; how they grew up in societies that told them that who they are is wrong.

And in these environments where all one hears is the voice of intolerance, many, sadly, believed it. But as bandwidths continue to grow and technology spreads, so does the voice of these once hidden stories. Social media, remarkably, allows people to connect, and in some cases, feel less alone.

And in this context, it really is a remarkable tool because it's allowing people who otherwise would struggle to be heard, to have a platform to have their— to be heard. So in the first three months, we had 100,000 followers on Instagram, and the support was really overwhelming. As a National Geographic contributing photographer, I was able to post on the National Geographic Instagram site. So, you know, for this picture alone, we had 240,000 people like it. You know, and given that our goal was to amplify the voices of those people silenced by bigotry, social media was really giving us a helping hand.

But it wasn't just a— you know, online that we were creating this work. And, sorry, it wasn't just my photographs, it was photographs from other people sharing their stories too. For as an example, CJ who is here from the U.S. CJ is from a Christian family. She lives in a very conservative area.

CJ was drugged and gang-raped by four young men. She was semi-conscious during the rape and remembers one of them telling her that he was saving her from burning eternally in hell. CJ is a lesbian. CJ told us that, you know, she was— it was very liberating for her to share her story, but she also talked about how she still felt a deep level of shame.

We were flooded with comments of love and support for CJ, and many people—including myself and the volunteers at Where Love Is Illegal—were deeply moved by her story. Again, social media was allowing people to connect. But the impact is not just online, and we've been having this work, you know, going to traditional media and into exhibitions in many different countries.

And this is just a, you know, the many different ways and platforms that we are able to have these voices heard, including things like doing talks like this. But as I said earlier, raising awareness is not enough. So, with some volunteers, I created this organization, Witness Change, which is a 501(c)(3) and, you know, some volunteers came forth. Some of them are here tonight, which is very nice, and impact became a major driver in the work that we do.

And we keep asking ourselves, where is the change in what we're doing? How are we making a difference? And we wanted to make sure that we were getting the work in front of people who could really make a difference and giving them avenues to make change happen. So, and that's what we've been doing.

So in every country where I worked, I would collaborate with a small organization, a grassroots organization, or a couple of people who are working with the LGBT community, and we thought okay if we can help to support them—some of them who are very poorly resourced—that would be making a difference.

So we raised some money and we supported an organization in South Africa who are helping LGBT refugees, and we raised some money and we helped an organization in Uganda who are tackling homophobic attitudes. And when the two young guys who helped me in northern Nigeria reached out to me and said, "There's four young men who have been arrested for committing gay acts and they are in prison, and we don't have bail. We can't afford legal representation,"

So we turned to social media and we posted this. And within 24 hours, we raised the money to get the bail and enough money to get them legal representation. So we got them out of prison, and their lawyers got the charges dropped. So, you know, Where Love Is Illegal has not by any stretch changed the world for LGBT people, but for these four young men, it really made a world of difference.