Documenting the joy and defiance of west Asia’s LGBTQ+ communities

In 2015, Russ­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kse­nia Kulesho­va was stand­ing on the esca­la­tor in Copen­hagen Air­port hav­ing just arrived for a short hol­i­day, when two men struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with her. The pair were head­ing home to St Peters­burg after their own mini-break, and enjoy­ing the photographer’s engaged demeanour, they opened up and explained that they were a couple.

As the pair left to catch their flight, they exchanged social media and con­tact details with the pho­tog­ra­ph­er before part­ing ways. When lat­er look­ing at their pro­files, Kuleshova’s first reac­tion was shock at how open they were about their rela­tion­ship. ​“Many ques­tions imme­di­ate­ly arose as to how this was pos­si­ble in Rus­sia, I remem­ber how sur­prised I was by this fact,” Kulesho­va recalls. ​“Aren’t they in danger?”

Born in Kalu­ga, a small town 180km (112 miles) from Moscow, Kulesho­va was well aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by Russia’s LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Homo­pho­bic atti­tudes are com­mon­place through­out the coun­try par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al areas, and rarely spo­ken about – Kulesho­va her­self only dis­cov­ered queer peo­ple exist­ed when she was well into her teens. The sit­u­a­tion was for­ti­fied in law in 2013 when Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin intro­duced the ​‘gay pro­pa­gan­da law’, which crim­i­nalised any per­son or organ­i­sa­tion that open­ly pro­mot­ed, taught or dis­cussed issues sur­round­ing queer iden­ti­ty to minors, deem­ing queer­ness to be a ​“west­ern val­ue”. The leg­is­la­tion has forced many queer com­mu­ni­ties under­ground, and also influ­enced grow­ing queer­pho­bia with­in oth­er for­mer Sovi­et Union nations. Today (Novem­ber 30, 2023), Russia’s Supreme Court has com­plete­ly banned what it calls the ​“inter­na­tion­al LGBT move­ment”, labelling it as ​“extrem­ist”.

Stay­ing in touch with the friends she made in the air­port, Kulesho­va trav­elled to St Peters­burg to meet and pho­to­graph them in 2018, which would be the gen­e­sis for her long-run­ning project Ordi­nary Peo­ple, now pub­lished as her debut mono­graph by The New Press.

Liv­ing with the pair and pho­tograph­ing them in their home and in pub­lic, they intro­duced Kulesho­va to their oth­er queer friends and over the next half decade she trav­elled around Rus­sia, and fur­ther afield to Geor­gia and Arme­nia, pho­tograph­ing and befriend­ing peo­ple who iden­ti­fy as LGBTQ+ in the face of grow­ing oppression.

The book’s pic­tures are both defi­ant and joy­ous – from a trans woman bold­ly strid­ing along a street in Yere­van, Arme­nia as heads turn to stare, to images of cou­ples in pri­vate, safe quar­ters and inti­mate bed­rooms. The visu­al resilience is by design – she refers to the sub­jects in her pho­tos as her ​“heroes”, with the shots only ever tak­en after con­nect­ing deeply with them. ​“I want­ed peo­ple to trust me, and the best way to do that [came] with a rec­om­men­da­tion from friends,” she explains. ​“I also lis­tened to pod­casts, watched queer pro­grammes where inter­est­ing sto­ries were told, and wrote to peo­ple I found online. But the best sto­ries I learned from my heroes – com­mu­ni­ca­tion is cru­cial in any project, and it was espe­cial­ly impor­tant in this one.”

The pic­tures focus on the every­day, and the book’s title Ordi­nary Peo­ple: Por­traits from LGBTQ Arme­nia, Geor­gia, and Rus­sia is tes­ta­ment to the pow­er queer peo­ple hold by sim­ply exist­ing in many parts of East­ern Europe. The shots sub­vert the typ­i­cal tropes of west­ern LGBTQ+ pho­tog­ra­phy, which often focus­es on queer bod­ies and the ​‘sex’ in sex­u­al­i­ty. ​“I realised that I don’t like the fact that the LGBTQ+ theme is always cov­ered from one side: the stage and make­up and naked bod­ies in bed,” she says. ​“For every­one, it’s a per­son­al mat­ter. The moments that hap­pen in everyone’s life, regard­less of ori­en­ta­tion were what I want­ed to pho­to­graph – it was my inten­tion to show that it’s nor­mal to be gay.”

The book’s pub­li­ca­tion comes at an increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult time for queer peo­ple. In Decem­ber 2022, Putin intro­duced an expand­ed, harsh­er ver­sion of the anti-LGBT pro­pa­gan­da law in the wake of his inva­sion of Ukraine, restrict­ing mate­ri­als express­ing non-cis, non-het­ero iden­ti­ties even to adults. While Rus­sia doesn’t col­late sta­tis­tics relat­ing to anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes – because those at the top don’t clas­si­fy the vio­lence as such – research by Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Dublin exam­in­ing court records found that a three­fold rise in vio­lence against LGBTQ+ peo­ple since the 2013 law was introduced.

Anec­do­tal­ly, the sit­u­a­tion is grow­ing worse, with Kulesho­va explain­ing that most peo­ple have to be dis­creet about their sex­u­al­i­ties, and hide their rela­tion­ships. When out­ed, the results are often hor­rif­ic. ​“Yes­ter­day, I received dev­as­tat­ing news from one of the heroes from Arme­nia,” she says. ​“One of the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, who was just 17 years old, com­mit­ted sui­cide by throw­ing him­self off a bridge. He did it after being cyber bul­lied and out­ed by Armen­ian con­ser­v­a­tives on the inter­net [and] after­ward he was sub­ject­ed to vio­lence and abuse from his par­ents, which was fol­lowed by him being kicked out of the house.

“Anoth­er trag­ic case took place 12 weeks ago in Yere­van: a 28-year-old trans­gen­der woman was bru­tal­ly killed and her apart­ment was set on fire,” she con­tin­ues. ​“She had pre­vi­ous­ly told friends she was being stalked. Accord­ing to the coro­ner she was stabbed, which they tried to hide by set­ting the apart­ment on fire.”

It’s a heart­break­ing sit­u­a­tion that is real­i­ty for many LGBTQ+ folk. It’s why for Kulesho­va, the book’s pub­li­ca­tion is a small, but impor­tant moment. ​“Every life mat­ters,” she says defi­ant­ly. ​“Every rep­re­sen­ta­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant impact. Soci­ety must accept the diver­si­ty of all cit­i­zens and pro­tect the rights of all indi­vid­u­als, regard­less of gen­der iden­ti­ty – the book is a trib­ute to my heroes who took part, and it’s also impor­tant for those who haven’t come out yet. I hope it helps some­one feel better.”

Ordi­nary Peo­ple: Por­traits from LGBTQ+ Arme­nia, Geor­gia and Rus­sia by Kse­nia Kulesho­va is pub­lished by The New Press.

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