This event is for all creatives who want to gain insight about how to approach a topic that is outside of their lived-experience, how to partner with people, and touch on subjects with sensitivity and awareness. The emphasis is community, from crowd-funding a project to collaborating with individuals and organizations.
Conversations with bookmakers, photographer Bernd Ott, writer Emily Besa and special guests, Loretta and Ed Zephyr
28 September 2017 – 6- 8 pm | The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop
16-18 Ramillies St, Soho, London W1F 7LW, UK
Bernd and Emily will introduce their book All the People and speak about their creative process, photographing and writing a book that explores gender identity and expression with 39 people from around the world, living in Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York.
The aim of this project is to build bridges between communities, and as Emily and Bernd are cis-gender & not queer-identified, it was important that the project truly centered their subjects/collaborators’ experiences and stories, giving all the people as much creative agency as possible.
They consulted and took cues from everyone who participated in the project, and worked with two organisations, Mermaids UK, a charity that connects and supports gender diverse children, young adults and their families, and TransAmsterdam, an organization that serves the trans community in Amsterdam and the Netherlands through a variety of social, educational, and cultural events, and spearheaded TransPride Amsterdam.
This creative project aims to connect us through acknowledging and celebrating differences as being beautifully unique but not other, hence the title All the People.
Ed Zephyr will speak at the event. Ed is a stage and screen actor and sits on the advisory panel for All About Trans, a UK organization working to improve understanding of trans people and promote trans voices in the media. They will speak about the importance of trans-led and initiated representation in all forms of media.
Loretta, who was seventeen years old when she participated in the book, will also be on hand to share her story as a young adult.
Our guests will be touching on the real impact of representation and visibility from personal experience and the necessity of both for working towards an open-minded and open-hearted, equal society--without prejudice, ignorance, and intolerance. They will also be speaking about the book in this framework.
You can find the Facebook event here.