The Photographer Documenting Anti-gay Discrimination Across the World

The photographs in Robin Hammond’s series “Where Love Is Illegal,” currently on display at the Bronx Documentary Center, are uncomfortably beautiful. The subjects posed as they wanted to be seen. “D.” and “O.,” from Russia, are embracing. Darya, also from Russia, is bare-chested, but she is covering her breasts with one hand and holding a knife in the other, as if ready to defend herself. Simon, from Uganda, appears with his torso bare but his head covered by a green cloth. His scars are visible; the women’s are not. All four describe the ways in which they were attacked, as do most of the other subjects. The exhibit is based on Hammond’s ongoing online project of the same name, which documents, as its Web site describes, “LGBTI stories of discrimination and survival from around the world.”

Hammond started the series Where Love Is Illegal in 2015, through his nonprofit organization Witness Change. Many of the people who share their images and stories come from countries where sexual activity between L.G.B.T.I. people is criminalized; others have been the targets of hate in places where homosexual contact is legal. Some participants send selfies. Some post no pictures at all. Some present photographs of loved ones they’ve lost. In a photograph from Cameroon, a woman named Alice is holding a picture of her younger brother Eric, who was tortured and killed in 2013, for speaking out against L.G.B.T.I. discrimination. After his death, the family continued receiving threats. One text message read, “You will die like your fag brother.”

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