The global political climate is becoming increasingly hostile towards queer lives. From legislative attacks on trans rights in the United States to the rise of right-wing movements across Europe cutting funding for LGBTIQ+ projects – safer spaces are shrinking, and essential community resources are under threat.
In the face of these developments, mutual care within queer communities becomes not only important, but necessary. As institutional support erodes, care work is often carried by individuals: unpaid, emotionally demanding, and frequently invisible. At the same time, growing numbers of queer people are pushed into precarious conditions.
This year’s exhibition brings together photographic works that explore how we continue to hold each other in times of uncertainty. In selecting the projects, we were particularly interested in artistic perspectives that engage with mutual support within the LGBTIQ+ community, queer care work in all its forms, and acts of resistance rooted in love, presence, and solidarity. The works also highlight everyday moments of protection, healing, and connection that sustain worldwide communities.
The works presented here invite you to reflect on care as a shared practice. A form of resilience, a political act, and a way of imagining futures in which no one is left behind.
Get more information and the story behind each project on the following pages.
Karlstorbahnhof and Poster Exhibition in the Streets of Heidelberg
08.05. – 30.05.
Marstallcafé, Altstadt
11.05. – 30.05.
PH Heidelberg, Foyer Neubau
13.05. – 30.05.
Join us for the exhibition introduction at PH Heidelberg on May 13 at 14:00 with Christina Bauernfeind.
Das globale politische Klima wird zunehmend feindlicher gegenüber queeren Lebensrealitäten. Von legislativen Angriffen auf Transrechte in den Vereinigten Staaten bis hin zum Erstarken rechter Bewegungen in Europa, die Fördermittel für LGBTIQ+-Projekte kürzen – Safer Spaces werden weniger und essenzielle Ressourcen der Community sind bedroht.
Angesichts dieser Entwicklungen wird gegenseitige Fürsorge innerhalb queerer Gemeinschaften nicht nur wichtig, sondern notwendig. Während institutionelle Unterstützung schwindet, wird Care-Arbeit häufig von Einzelpersonen getragen: Sie ist unbezahlt, emotional fordernd und oft unsichtbar. Gleichzeitig geraten immer mehr queere Menschen in prekäre Lebenssituationen.
Die diesjährige Ausstellung versammelt fotografische Arbeiten, die erforschen, wie wir uns in Zeiten der Unsicherheit weiterhin gegenseitig stützen können. Bei der Auswahl der Projekte haben wir uns besonders für künstlerische Perspektiven interessiert, die sich mit gegenseitiger Unterstützung innerhalb der LGBTIQ+-Community, queerer Care-Arbeit in all ihren Formen sowie mit in Liebe, Präsenz und Solidarität verwurzelten Formen des Widerstands beschäftigen. Die Werke machen zudem alltägliche Momente von Schutz, Heilung und Verbundenheit sichtbar, die weltweit Communities tragen.
Die hier präsentierten Werke laden dazu ein, Fürsorge als gemeinsame Praxis zu begreifen. Als Form von Resilienz, als politischen Akt und als Möglichkeit, sich Zukünfte vorzustellen, in denen niemand zurückgelassen wird.
“Hors-Jeu” is a French pun on the offside rule in football, literally “out of the game”, paired with a Turkish phrase meaning “queer people are everywhere.” This juxtaposition reflects the paradox at its core: queer communities in Turkey are systematically pushed to the margins, yet remain present across all social and geographic spaces.
The project follows Betty, who lives between concealment and emergence, navigating a reality shaped by transition, fear, and survival. These objects do not appear as incidental props, but as carriers of meaning, material condensations of self-assurance, protection and inner orientation.
TOPS explores the vulnerability inherent in processes of bodily and subjective transformation, focusing on individuals who have undergone top surgery. Through a combination of group and individual portraits, as well as interior settings, the work traces moments of transition in which identity is continuously unraveling and re-forming.
Is He Family? is a collaborative body of work created with Neil, the artist’s former drama teacher and now friend. The project takes its title from coded language once used within queer communities, where phrases such as “are they family?” functioned as signals of recognition, safety, and solidarity in contexts where openly queer existence carried risk.
Held by Each other: Community care and Queer Survival in Nigeria reflects many different forms of holding each other, rooted in Nigeria but also transcending geographically and culturally constrained spaces. It speaks to a search for sanctuary, for closeness in distance and for a sense of family within diverse constellations, universal longings that take shape as different forms of a warm embrace.
What has become of the people portrayed in Ali Mahini’s series Prince of Persia in the months since encountering the work, whether they are still alive, remains unknown. Nor do we know the current state of the park that served as their place of gathering. Concrete information from within and about Iran is, at present, scarcely accessible.
We are deeply moved by Tania Navarro’s story, as well as by the strength, resilience and joy of life reflected in the eyes captured by Luca Gaetano Pira in his documentary series.
Sergei Stroitelev’s series is carried by cool, subdued tones and soft light. Interiors and carefully placed objects interact and become carriers of emotion. A sense of being held unfolds, located not only in interpersonal relationships but also in objects and letters that store and transmit memory.
Bienyl Huelgas shows a poetic visual language of mythic imagery and written thought, presenting the notion of holding each other not only between individuals but as a collective structure: a shared carrying of pain, memory and desire within a community that stabilizes itself.
In moments of crisis, censorship and systematic erasure, the need for support becomes all the more urgent. Léa Fiterman develops a precise yet poetic visual language in response, in which formal restraint and tactile interventions play a central role.
Duet is an ongoing collaboration between the two artists Zac Thompson and JuJu rooted in film photography and performance, shaped by shared experiences of growing up in religious, evangelical environments.
Searching for safe and welcoming spaces, sites that allow for free self-expression and enable lives beyond the margins, aligns not only with geo-political borders but often also across the divide between rural and urban contexts.
林家夯 Lin Jaihang shows a fragile interplay of familiarity, desire and care through gestures of physical closeness. His photographs are tender and playful, characterized by light, warmth, and intimacy. In a darkening present, they offer a perspective that reminds us of the possibility of beauty in closeness.
Source Material
The source material was edited and interpreted by Christina Bauernfeind, jury member since 2023. Project descriptions and author biographies are informed by self-descriptions and details provided by the artists in response to the festival exhibition calls, collective jury statements, and discussions.
Quellen
Die Texte wurden von Christina Bauernfeind, Jurymitglied seit 2023, bearbeitet und interpretiert. Die Projektbeschreibungen und Autorenbiografien beruhen auf Texten der Künstlerinnen und Künstler beim Fotowettbewerb und auf kollektiven Jurystatements und Diskussionen.
