Photographic journalist Kristy Boyce has turned her gaze to Russia’s LGBT community, in light of the country’s most recent wave of anti-LGBT activist legislation and the Sochi Olympics.
Through her ongoing project, “What Dyke Looks Like,” Boyce traveled to Russia to document, she explains, “the hypocrisy of having the Olympics in a country while its people suffer human rights abuses.” Boyce believes that this particular endeavor in portrait-making is a collaborative process that functions as a kind of “reverse discourse,” as a way to give Russia’s LGBT community an avenue of expression. In tandem with this objective, she has also produced video interviews of members of the community in order to “allow a more dominant, direct voice of [the] people,” from coming out stories to testimonies of bigoted violence experienced against them.
With over 25 participants so far, including a rainbow of community members, from trans men to femmes, butches to bears, Boyce’s next goal is to turn this documentary footage into a published book.
Find out more about “What Dykes Look Like,” and particularly the Sochi edition, at whatdykelooklike.com or on Facebook.
