Student-Led LGBTQ Photo Campaign and Fundraiser Launch

Posing for a portrait, Moiya A. S. McTier ’16 stands before a pale blue wall holding a blackboard with the handwritten phrase, “I shouldn’t have to prove my bisexuality.” The image is just one of 45 photos of Harvard students and alumni that make up the new “In the Making” photo campaign, which aims to increase awareness about issues that persist in the queer community despite recent progress towards marriage equality.

Campaign creators Curtis L. Lahaie ’15 and Kyle J. McFadden ’18 launched the online photo gallery Monday, along with a social media campaign and a 60-day fundraiser to raise $10,000 for three nonprofit organizations working on LGBTQ-related concerns.

While marriage equality does matter, Lahaie and McFadden said, the prominence of the issue tends to overshadow other problems still affecting queer individuals. They said that they hoped to shed light on some of these problems by telling individual stories with portraits and personalized signs held by participants.

“They aren’t just a bunch of lines that we came up with and assigned to various people,” McFadden added. “They are personal displays of struggles [participants] had gone through.”

Some of the lines included “Bi, not ‘confused’,” “Can’t pray away my gay,” “Queer justice is racial justice,” and “I can be fired for my ‘lifestyle choice.’”

“Statistics can provide useful information,” Lahaie said. “But when you put faces to these statistics, it makes it so much more powerful.”

McTier, for example, said that her line directly addressed the doubts others have expressed about her sexuality.

The campaign bears similarities to the “I, Too, Am Harvard” and “EmBODYIndia” campaigns, which featured students holding signs with statements to raise awareness about racial diversity at Harvard and sexual assault in India, respectively.

Although “In the Making” was originally conceptualized for one of Lahaie’s classes, Lahaie said it quickly took on greater meaning. The campaign has received funding from the Open Gate Foundation, a charitable foundation established by queer alumni to fund LGBTQ-related activities and events at Harvard. Lahaie and McFadden are also partnering with Queer Students and Allies to carry out the campaign’s fundraiser through the online crowd-funding platform Indiegogo.

The project’s gallery currently consists of 45 individual portraits and accompanying lines shot by McFadden. While Lahaie and McFadden have discussed the possibility of holding a second photoshoot and expanding the number of official images, they said “In the Making” also challenges viewers to create and share their own photos on social media, and that they hope the campaign will spread beyond Harvard to other universities.

Tey Meadow, the assistant professor of Sociology whose course prompted the campaign, said she thinks that the project has garnered so many participants because it allows them to show aspects of themselves not reflected in mainstream media.

“[It] leads me to believe that [Lahaie] has tapped into some need in the community to be represented,” she said.

—Staff writer Quynh-Nhu Le can be reached at quynhnhu.le@thecrimson.com.