As Pride approaches, world-famous fashion photographer Leslie Kee is casting Taiwan’s LGBT community in its very best light.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/10/25
By: Cat Thomas
Credit: GagaOOLala
Every year on the last weekend of October, thousands of people from around Asia flock to Taipei for the continent’s biggest Pride Parade. The annual march, which has been running since 2003, is attended by people from all walks of life to celebrate the human right to be yourself.
As Pride approaches, celebrated Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee – who has snapped subjects such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Kate Moss over his 20-year career – spent last Sunday photographing 200 LGBT subjects for “Out In Taiwan,” which follows his successful exhibits “Out in Japan” (ongoing since 2015) and “Out in Singapore” (2018).
The projects aim to humanize the LGBT community and familiarize the public with their diverse faces.
Taiwan has long led the way in LGBT rights in the region and currently boasts a progressive gender equality education policy in the form of the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法), which has been in place since 2004. Additionally, in May 2017 the Constitutional Court ruled that marriage is a human right and should not be denied on the basis of sexuality, in the process giving Taiwan’s parliament a two-year deadline to legislate on its decision. [FULL STORY]