These Powerful Portraits Capture What Life Is Really Like for Uganda's LGBT Activists

Portraits of Ugandan LGBT activists taken by Daniella Zalcman showing a woman in a baseball cap

Impact

March 25, 2014

In Uganda, the act of living, of being true to your core identity, can you get you thrown in jail — or worse.

On Feb. 24, Uganda President Museveni signed into law a bill criminalizing homosexuality. With a stroke of his pen, President Museveni told his nation's LGBT citizens that they are aberrant, unnatural and certainly unwelcome. This is the reality captured by photojournalist Daniella Zalcman in her powerful series Double Exposure.

Zalcman, supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, first visited Uganda in 2011 when she spent time with LGBT activists fighting against the rampant anti-gay sentiment in the country.

"People are fearful of what's going to happen under this new law, and they're fearful for the future of LGBT awareness and all of the related psychological, physical, and public health risks, but they still want to tell their stories," Zalcman told PolicyMic.

Many of the courageous people depicted in the portraits are already well-known for their activism, Zalcman noted.

"I think they feel the need to demonstrate that the Anti-Homosexuality Act isn't going to bully them into disappearing or giving up their struggle," she told PolicyMic. "That commitment is incredibly dangerous — not only has their work been explicitly criminalized as 'promotion' of homosexuality, there have been multiple reports of beatings and various forms of mob justice."

Indeed, those who are fighting against homophobia in Uganda have had their phones tapped, their homes and offices raided and their livelihoods threatened. Given the nature of their work, Zalcman said her deliberate use of exposure illustrates an important point: "These double exposures are an attempt to show that even the most prominent activists still have to keep a part of themselves hidden to survive."

Over the course of her project, Zalcman conducted interviews with Ugandans to "gauge public opinion."

"The answers ranged from people genuinely not caring and feeling like policymakers should be concentrating on more important issues, to people who obviously believed that homosexuality is evil," she said.

Ultimately, Zalcman hopes that her photos will put a human face on Uganda's humanitarian crisis, which echoes throughout the world.

"I want people to understand that there are a substantial number of people in our world — not just in developing countries — who are scared to be themselves or can't be themselves, and that's a horrible and sad reality," she said.