Single - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Fashion and Beauty »
Gold Medal
Queer Immigrants is an ongoing photographic project that documents moments of resilience and presence within a broader historical context, addressing the long-standing misrepresentation of queer lives.
Rooted in my own experience of fleeing a repressive religious family and navigating exile within my hometown, the project treats migration as a fundamental human right. Being queer and being an immigrant are intertwined processes of transformation: shedding enforced roles, collecting stories and cultures, and remaking identity. The subjects I photograph, friends, fellow artists, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, embody those journeys of survival, reinvention, and belonging.
Visually, the series uses monochromatic tones that evoke newspapers, archival photographs, and vintage family portraits. This aesthetic situates each image within a continuum of history and memory, reclaiming visual languages that have long excluded or misread queer lives. By adopting the familiar grammar of portraiture, I aim to assert the legitimacy and visibility of each subject’s presence.
Queer Immigrants is both confrontation and celebration. It challenges dominant narratives that erase or simplify our stories, while honouring the complexity, dignity, and quiet power of those who move across borders, geographical, cultural, and emotional to create themselves anew. Through intimate, historically grounded imagery, the series invites viewers to witness and reframe what it means to belong.
