Curve Magazine
January/February 2015
What does it feel like to be young and queer today? A new book of 65 color portraits, Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus presents portraits of the queer Millennial Generation. Award-winning Philadelphia-based photographer Rachelle Lee Smith gives LGBTQ youth an outlet to speak for themselves through her in-your-face, funny, warm, and powerful images of queer youth. The white space of the color portraits are filled with first-person text, giving self-expression to a diverse group of young people, aged fourteen to twenty four, who identify along a range of sexual orientations and gender expressions.“I have never had a mullet, I am not a man hater, I don’t listen to KD Lang, I am not butch, I don’t drive a truck, I am not a feminist…What kind of lesbian am I?” writes JoEllen, one of the subjects featured in Speaking OUT. From GLSEN to the It Gets Better Project, our community attempts to provide resources for queer youth. But it’s hard to address the inequities created by race, class, sexual orientation and gender identification without hearing from young people themselves and addressing their spoken needs. Be inspired by these images, these words, and the young people behind them. This is our youth.
