Photographer Alexa Seewald is exhibiting 100 pictures from her ANDERSRUMpotrait series today at the Brandenburg Gate for CSD in Berlin. IWWIT thinks: well worth seeing.
There is no other occasion in Berlin all year round where you can see so many gay and bisexual men from behind at once as at CSD. This applies to everyone who watches one of the two marches - the transgender CSD in Kreuzberg and the larger classic march across the city - and of course to those who join in - like the IWWIT team.
That's why today is also a big pound group for photographer Alexa Seewald, who has photographed 1800 beautiful and very different backsides of lesbian, gay, queer, bisexual, intersex and transgender people for her ANDERSRUMportrait project over the last 12 months.
She is exhibiting them today at the end point of the CSD Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate. And of course she's also taking lots of new photos.
The location was chosen deliberately: "In order to publicise ANDERSRUMportrait beyond the scene, the exhibition will take place outdoors to make it accessible to more people than in a gallery. The aim is to appeal to those who are hardly or not at all confronted with the topic of homosexuality in everyday life or, in the worst case, have unfounded prejudices and clichéd ideas and would never visit such an exhibition on their own initiative. That's why we are showing our latest 100 most beautiful portraits at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin," says Seewald. She explains her concept as follows:
"What should gays or lesbians look like? Who or what decides what someone should look like and, more importantly, where does someone get the right to do so?" The project aims to show the in-between areas, the colourful grey between the black and white terms heterosexual and homosexual. Gays look like lesbians from behind and vice versa, heterosexual boys have gay hips and you can't tell whether someone wearing an evening dress is about to go to the opera or to the stage of a tranny show by looking at his or her back. Of course, you can recognise some gay men from behind, but not many. Identity takes place in the mind. Seewald says: "This is the only way I think I have a chance with this project to show viewers that they may be caught in their own mental traps."
This approach and the resulting images are so beautiful that IWWIT is happy to support Alexa Seewald.
More information about the project and more pictures at
(pasch)
