Photographer Shows DADT Art

“Dean, Montgomerey, Alabama, 2010,” reads the caption on the side of the photograph. The man in the picture wears a green camouflage uniform and sits on a motel bed hugging his knees to his chest. He bows his head so the camera does not capture his face.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Jeff T. Sheng’s ’02 most recent photographic project, shot in 2009 and 2010, features gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender service members. Sheng said he could not show the faces of the people he photographed or any features that would reveal the identity of his subjects since the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy—which was officially repealed on Tuesday—did not allow them to disclose their sexual orientation.

“If their face was in it, they would get kicked out of the military,” Sheng said.

Thursday night, Visiting Lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies Sheng presented some of his photographs at an exhibition in the Carpenter Center.

The photographs have attracted attention both in and outside the art world, including a mention during Congressional debates in March over whether “Dont Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law that forbade gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from openly serving in the military, should be repealed.

Last year, after Sheng published the first book of his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” photographs and while working on a second he met with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. They told him that they wanted to show images of service members affected by the military’s policy.

“I got insider information,” Sheng says. “They told me: there is a 50:50 shot that Obama is going to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ If you could get this published, it would ease the process,” he said.

The second book of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” photographs was published two days before President Obama’s State of the Union Address in which he announced his plan to repeal the law.

“[My work] feels so historic all of a sudden,” he added, referring to the law’s recent repeal.

The idea for the books came from service members themselves.

After completing a series of photographs called “Fearless” in which Sheng took pictures of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender athletes, Sheng says service members—many of them former athletes—contacted him asking him to do a series on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“I felt really compelled,” Sheng said. “The service members just really wanted me to do something. It’s hard to say no when someone who is fighting for your country asks you to do something like this.”

Sheng says the next part of the series will focus on service members showing their faces as they can now serve openly.

—Staff writer Eliza M. Nguyen can be reached at enguyen@college.harvard.edu.