He is She

Tim Hetherington, a British photojournalist once said –

“I don’t really care about photography. I’m interested in engaging people with ideas and views of the world”

Now and Then

This set of images are not pre-planned; you can consider it as street portraits with a fashion touch, the kind of photography I do on street with strangers. This is more like a spontaneous act, I took all these images at 4 Time Square, I still remember the address – just a building away from the most visited place in New York City; it’s under a building, a sort of tunnel that connects two streets across.

When we grew up, someplace in West Bengal, India, we were not so concerned about genders and sexuality-based identity, and it was pretty much simple – male or female. But now, it is no more like that; male and female are still there, and in addition to that some people add sub-genders based on their sexual orientation, like male-straight, male-gay, or in short LGBT.

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. As per Wikipedia, LGBT is comparatively a new term; it is in use since the 1990s, and it has been adopted by the majority of sexuality and gender identity-based community centers and media in the United States and some other English-speaking countries.

Here my point is that now awareness is prominent like never before and sexuality-oriented gender identification is being considered as cool and pretty much acceptable, which probably was not the case even a few years back. The world has changed since we were a kid, and recently it is changing rapidly. There are now laws for marriage equality. Public figures and celebrities are not ashamed of their true sexual identity and this helped to change the social perceptions and made our culture more tolerant.

Social Perceptions

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who made headlines in October, 2014 when he publicly acknowledged being gay in an essay for Business Week.

“While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

He goes on…

“I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.”

Anderson Cooper, broadcast journalist, author, and talk show host known as the “silver fox”, serves as the primary anchor of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. It wasn’t until 2012 when he gave permission to Andrew Sullivan to publish an email stating:

“I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something—something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed, or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true. … The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.”

The world will continue to change… and so our perceptions of how we look at society. It’s time to claim who you are actually.

Anyway, I hope you liked the photos. I sincerely thank Izzy and Natasha for their spontaneous and candid poses, and for allowing me to take their photographs.