Queer Immigrants

Queer Immigrants is an ongoing project which aims to capture moments of people within a historical context to bring awareness to the long-resisting and historically misrepresented Queer community. Through this body of work, I explore the idea of migration as a human right, given my history of leaving the place where I am from, which was a very repressive and unaccepting religious family. I existed in a society that constantly dictated how I should express my gender and sexuality; I felt like a foreigner even in my hometown, missing a sense of belonging. As an immigrant myself, I had to escape to find my identity to survive. Through imaginative exploration, these characters that have moved and collected multiple cultures on the way, transcend their everyday existence. To be queer and to be an immigrant is to transform, shedding familiar roles and embracing new dimensions. The focus is to photograph individuals who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, including friends and fellow artists. The use of monochromatic colors resembles newspaper and historical photographs from old books and magazines and traditional family photos, a type of portraiture that has been present since the invention of photography. It is by embracing these parameters that I create a place to be reclaimed, showing the importance of each and every person that I photograph in their own manner. The Queer Immigrants series is an act of both confrontation and pride. It is a collective effort to reshape the narrative surrounding our community and challenge the misconceptions that have perpetuated its misrepresentation. Through visual storytelling, I invite viewers to embark on this journey with us, immersing themselves in the complexities and triumphs of our lives.