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All Images © Ron Amato 2018
Ron Amato’s Gay in Trumpland is a moving and powerful meditation on what it means to be LGBT in contemporary America. Photographer Amato describes the series as ‘a visual expression of our community getting pushed back, denied basic protections under the law and being expected to forego the basic human rights of loving and community building’.
Amato is Fashion Institute of Technology professor of photography, based in New York.
Gay in Trumpland is a 40-photo sequence which shows men enshrouded, separated, hooded and noosed.
Amato recalls that when Trump was elected, ‘I became frightened that the civil rights gains the LGBTQ community had fought so hard for, might be in danger of being reversed. I felt helpless. I am first and foremost an artist. I took to the studio to express myself.’
‘Using Mike Pence’s history of anti-LGBTQ actions as an indication,’ he continues, ‘I came to the conclusion that Pence and his ilk didn’t just want to send us back into the closet, they wanted to eradicate homosexuality. I then set out to visually communicate this by not allowing the men in the photographs to connect. To thwart the fulfillment of their sexuality, if you will.’
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018
Image © Ron Amato 2018More information
View and purchase Gay in Trumpland photographs, read Ron Amato’s statement and interview about the series, as well as a list of actions taken by the administration which have negatively affected the LGBTQ community at ronamato.com.
