Pride Photo 2025
For the open call of the Pride Photo Contest 2025 we received over 6000 entries from 78 countries, and all continents.
The independent jury led by Jury Chair Mohamad Abdouni, came to a unanimous decision on the 2025 collection. The jury brought together Dilys Ng, Maurits de Bruijn, Lee-Ann Olwage, and JG Basdew. They came to a decision after careful review, and through discussing the merit and position of the works and how they could create meaningful impact. With a focus on work that showcased artistic depth whilst revealing compelling stories that express varied aspects of queer life and identity.
The collection that makes up the Pride Photo 2025 exhibition forms a vivid portrait of the dynamic, diverse, and complex experiences within the global LGBTQIA+ community.
Supranav Dash
EROS AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Stories
2025
Eros And Its Discontents explores the lives and desires of individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community living in India. This series of performative portraits embodies struggles of identity, hopes and dreams, pleasures and pain, acceptance and rejection. The people in the images are treading a psychological minefield; whose lives are a crisscross of complexities arising out of a religious, conservative and homophobic culture and rhetoric present in contemporary Hindu communities in India. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court struck down ‘Section 377’ of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalised same-sex relations between consenting adults. This law, originally put in place under...
Su Cassiano
LOVE HARDER
Stories
2025
Love Harder is an ongoing, long-term series which explores the positioning of queer identities in relation to religion in the conservative Mediterranean cultural regions. This project aims to map out the multiplicity of queer people that continue to exist within cultures that try to deny and delegitimize their identities through visual portraiture, landscape photography, and personal interviews. This project takes place in various countries around the Mediterranean basin, including Malta, Turkey, and France, and works with LGBTQIA+ people from Catholic and Muslim backgrounds. Each portrait acts as a window into the life of a queer person who was raised within...
Mateus Porto
MATTHEW AND ERIC
Singles
2025
A portrait of Matthew and Eric, acquaintances of the photographer, in his photo studio. ‘I didn't say much, just let them interact as I shot images. They began wrestling and I captured this image.’ writes Mateus. The jury commends the work for its visual impact, pushing the viewer to question the relationship between Matthew and Eric. By capturing a moment that is intimate whilst also being ‘rough,’ the image highlights ideas of masculinity and touch.
Mit Euren Spuren Collective
MIT EUREN SPEUREN
Stories
2025
Up until 1994, Germany’s legal code criminalised same-sex relationships under ‘Section 175’, and created a climate of oppression and persecution of the LGBTQIA+ community. Due to this societal stigmatization and discrimination, many of Germany’s seniors were forced to conceal their sexual and gender identities, and never had the opportunity to live as themselves freely and without fear. Mit Euren Spuren (With Your Traces) is an interdisciplinary photography project encompassing a long-term collaborative endeavour between six queer photographers and eight queer senior citizens. The result is an intergenerational exchange of ideas about queer life, and the distinctive experiences of various generations...
Akanksha Pandey
MY DAUGHTER, BONITA
Stories
2025
My Daughter, Bonita is an intimate and multi-layered portrait of Bonita's journey in navigating her gender transition, throughout which she has been unwaveringly supported by her sister. Bonita’s story is intertwined with personal, familial, and societal dynamics present in contemporary India. Growing up in a rural village in Rajasthan, Bonita faced multiple challenges when integrating her female identity amongst people who have known her since birth. Bonita's sister who, due to the lack of a strong male figure, took on traditionally masculine roles within the family as the primary provider and protector. The sisters chose to migrate into more progressive...
Meret Eberl
NBSW
Stories
2025
NBSW is an ode to non-binary people who are, or have been, engaged in sex work at some point in their lives. Popular discourse and institutional policies often overlook the existence, needs, and safety of non-binary people as well as sex workers. Without legal recognition of their gender identity, non-binary people are often forced to repeatedly assert their right to exist in both personal and professional life. Gender stereotypes, classism, and racism reinforce these barriers in the realm of sex work, often silencing the voices of those affected and impeding the communication of their needs and experiences. This lack of...
Vincent Wechselberger
READY
Stories
2025
READY offers an honest series of portraits around contemporary queer sex work, through the photographer Wechselberger’s own relationship to the industry. Wechselberger writes, “When I was 18, I first received an offer for ‘pocket money’ online – for sexual services. Soon after, I moved to Berlin and immersed myself in a new world of dates and clients, many of whom became regulars. Through sex work, I experienced new forms of freedom. I reinvented myself. I let go of preconceived societal notions about how I should live my life. A central aim of this series is to re-frame how we think...
Claudia Deganutti
RUTH E BILLIE
Stories
2025
Ruth & Billie portrays the realities of two siblings on a journey of self-actualisation, as they grow into their sexual and gender identities whilst growing up within a conservative Catholic family in a rural town in Italy. This series examines how dogma and tradition influence our understanding and acceptance of sexual and gender identity and diversity. Billie is 18-years-old, and although they were assigned female at birth, they identify closer to male in terms of gender identity. Ruth is 22-years-old and identifies as female, and as pansexual, which means she finds herself attracted to people of all gender identities. Both...
Tamta Gokadze
SADNESS AND FEAR
Singles
2025
Crowds gather to show their respects at the funeral of Kesaria Abramidze. Kesaria, a 37-year-old Georgian trans woman, was found murdered in her apartment on the night of September 18, 2024. Kesaria was an established model, actress and public figure, and was widely seen as a trailblazer for Georgia’s trans and LGBTQIA+ rights. In 2024, global data reveals that more than 350 transgender and gender-diverse people have been murdered. The news of Kesaria’s death came just one day after Georgia's Parliament passed a controversial anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation. This law restricts LGBTQIA+ rights to non-discrimination, health care and education, freedom of speech...
Lisa Großkopf
THE PHOTOSTUDIO
Stories
2025
THE PHOTO STUDIO is a long-running multi-medial series exploring the interplay between visual and aesthetic currents and their representation of societal norms. With a playful and experimental approach, Großkopf uses photography to examine and challenge contemporary social conditions. The Photo Studio takes aim at traditional family portraiture that often reinforce outdated gender roles. By setting up fictional photo studios in empty shop windows, Großkopf subverts expectations. Instead of images of nuclear families, and stereotypical portraits of binary gender ideals, Großkopf presents a refreshingly critical and feminist perspective. The work deconstructs gender roles, undermines conventional lifestyles, and champions diverse relationship models...
Melissa Ianniello
WISH IT WAS A COMING OUT
Stories
2025
Wish it Was a Coming Out is an ongoing long-term project portraying LGBTQIA+ senior citizens in Italy. For many of the people photographed, the shifts in legislation experienced over the past decades have directly impacted their lives and individual human rights. The history of LGBTQIA+ rights in Italy is marked by significant social, cultural, and legal turbulence. Albeit shifts towards greater acceptance and protection for LGBTQIA+ people in the early 21st century, the political rise of far-right and conservative parties has massively regressed the state of protection. As recently as 2021, Italy’s far-right parties voted against a law that would...
Ohm Phanphiroj
YOU WILL BE THERE
Stories
2025
You Will Be There is a self-portrait series exploring issues of self, sexuality, and binary gender roles. By examining the relationship between the self and others in an intimate context, both privately and publicly, Phanphiroj aims to engage in dialogues around race, gender identity, roleplay, seduction, longing, and acceptance. Phanphiroj reflects on these portraits “reveal my personal desire for an openness and a search to understand not only who and what I am, but how the world understands me, regards me, and judges me.” This project is not only a personal response to a desire to understand himself, but also...