Jeff Pearcy: Shall Not Be Recognized photographer
Monday, April 19th, 2010
To follow-up Natali’s brilliant story on the Shall Not Be Recognized project, I caught up with photographer Jeff Pearcy in his 3rd Ward studio…
Arno: How did a self-proclaimed “straight old white guy” get involved in the Shall Not Be Recognized Project?
Jeff: It really started when the law passed that forbade gay people to get married in Wisconsin—the constitutional amendment against that. My wife and I had both worked really hard to defeat that amendment. Both of us knew that in Wisconsin it was likely to pass regardless of the issues that were raised. One of the things I had noticed as I watched that process happen was that while the fight against the amendment was really good, they missed the boat because they tried to say that the amendment had something to do with all people who were in committed relationships that didn’t have the benefit of marriage, but in reality, it was a “hate gays” amendment—nothing else. Otherwise it would have had no traction. The only reason it got voted-in was because of homophobia and people who hate gay people. As I got to thinking about that, I thought that many people don’t even know a gay person. They have no idea how some people lead their lives. What happens to me oftentimes is that I turn my anger into my photography and my photojournalism. I thought that if I could capture a side of the gay culture that they’re not considering when they make their choices to vote…
Arno: When you say “they” you mean the average Joe?
Jeff: Yeah. I mean the people who are on the fence. The people who kind of vote because someone says to them, “well, aren’t you in favor of marriage?” …and they think, “duh… yeah. I’m in favor of marriage!”, then they make a stupid vote. It’s not that they’re openly homophobic, or hate gays, it’s just that the Catholic Church and other institutions are telling them it’s a matter of the “Preservation of Marriage.” Of course they want to “preserve marriage” when it gets framed to them in that way. There’s people who are on polar extremes: there’s us and then there’s right-wing, dyed-in-the-wool bigots, who we’re never going to be able to approach… but there are a lot of people who didn’t understand the issue and were waffling around—they didn’t really understand what they were voting against or for—and those are the people who I wanted to target with this project. I had known Will Fellows for a number of years through our association in our church….
Arno: Which is…?
Jeff: The Unitarian Church—Unitarian Universalists. Will was President of our congregation when I was chair of a committee and we had worked closely together. I knew who he was and I had read his first book and I had a lot of respect for him, both as a man and as an author. So I had dinner with Will and said that I had an idea. I said how about if we took pictures of same-sex couples who had been together for longer than seven years, which we picked because the average time a straight couple is together before they get divorced (in the US) is seven years. I wanted people in the project who had outperformed the straight community statistically. Will was enthused with the idea and was going to do an interview with each couple about the life they led and the issues they faced while attempting to have a long-term, committed relationship in a society that doesn’t acknowledge their right to exist, while I would do a photograph that captured something about them and their relationship. We talked about how we could could get the project funded, but we committed that night that the project would happen whether it got funded or not—that was our commitment to each other. We had hoped that we could get ten couples, and we agreed that we had to have both lesbian and gay couples, and hopefully transgender couples, in the project. So that was the beginning. We began to advertise in gay press newspapers and through some of the advocacy groups that had fought the marriage amendment so that we could get our name out there—that this was a project we were trying to do.
Arno: Now, you were hoping for ten couples to begin with. What happened once the word got out?
Jeff: I’m not sure that this project would have happened without Will’s involvement. Part of that is that there was absolutely no reason for anybody to trust me, you know? I am just as you described me; an old white straight guy. Teaming-up with a gay man made this happen. The other thing was that there were people who were leaders in the fight who really got enthused about the project: Ray Vahey, who was kind of the spiritual center of the project, was one of the early ones who were encouraging us. We began with whoever responded to the ads, and Will would do the interview. Then he would let me know that he had interviewed a couple and that I should contact them for a photograph. Most photo sessions lasted about 3 or 4 hours, of which about 10 minutes was spent taking pictures. The rest of it was building trust— them asking questions like “why was an old straight white guy doing this project?”, and me answering them. Then we would find out what they were passionate about in their lives. Many times I had to come back and take a second photo, because the one we originally took didn’t capture it. An example is there was one couple I was going to shoot at their apartment here in Milwaukee, but it turns out that they were building a prairie preserve out in the Lacrosse area, and that was their passion. Sp my wife and I made plans to go up there and spend the weekend with them and shoot picture while they were working on their prairie restoration, which is what they really lived for
Arno: speaking of us straight guys, and straight people in general, why is it so important to have more straight involvement in LGBT activism?
Jeff: Because they’re human beings.
Arno: Exactly. That’s the message that we’re trying to get across with our coverage of Shall Not Be Recognized. But it’s also a message that’s too often lost on this group of fence-sitters that we’re trying to reach at the ballot box and that we’re trying to win the hearts and minds of. I think there’s a lot of straight people who don’t make that connection—that gay and lesbian people are human beings. And they don’t see the interconnection—that our rights are their rights.
Jeff: My wife and I took it so seriously that we almost got a divorce. We seriously talked about it, and the reason we were going to do it was that rights that are denied to one group in this world are truly denied to you too. The fact that the state of Wisconsin passed a constitutional amendment that said that these people are not equal to me and can’t have this right… means that I probably shouldn’t enjoy it either. But we found out we couldn’t do it. We found out that there’s something that happens in marriage that doesn’t happen when just living together. It’s very hard to put into words, but let’s just say that I’ve lived with women, and I’ve married two. Marriage is different. And to say that a whole group of people—because of who they’re attracted to—can’t have that feeling that I have for my wife… is absolutely absurd.
Arno: What’s your response to someone who says that a gay lifestyle is a choice, and that it’s an aberration—that we shouldn’t be accommodating them with “special” rights?
Jeff: I think that’s probably a solid argument… the day they can identify to me the moment they chose to be straight. The first person who can tell me about the day they were considering, “gay? Straight? Hmmm. No, I’m gonna be straight…” …then I might buy into that argument. There is absolutely nothing in any psychological literature, medical literature, or anything like that—other than antiquated and ambiguous bible verses—that tell you that this is somehow a choice. It’s a hard-wired part of who you are, and no more a choice than if you can choose to be born with blue eyes.
Arno: What have you learned from your experiences working on Shall Not Be Recognized?
Jeff: Hmmm. Well, even I was shocked to learn how common and boring most gay people are! …and I mean that in the best sense of the word.
Arno: You mean they don’t all wear butt-less chaps and sing show tunes?
Jeff: Heh! No, not quite. The actual artistic challenge of the project was; how do I take engaging and arresting pictures of people who are just ordinary? One of the things that Will and I talked about before we even started—what we were hoping—was that straight people would see the photographs and read the writing and come away saying, “they’re just like us!” …and gay people would look at it and read it and come away saying, “they got it. That’s us.” It’s interesting that some of the people who were most engaged with the project—who helped fund a lot of it—were parents of lesbians and gays. As I would go to gallery talks (Shall Not Be Recognized is in it’s 14th gallery installation right now), the people who you could watch—who were most emotional—were parents. My brother and sister in-law are parents of a lesbian woman who just had her commitment ceremony with her partner a couple of weeks ago. When they saw the exhibit, they said, “this is what I want for my daughter.” Parents of gay and lesbian people, who have accepted them for who they are and who they’re attracted to, want just what any other parent wants for their kid: they want them to find somebody out there, who loves and respects them, and honors them, and treats them like they’re gold. Just like anybody else. So when they see this captured in photography… that’s what they want for their kid. They don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl that they’re in love with; they only care that they’re happy.
Stay tuned for issue 5 of Life After Hate, where we’ll wrap-up our coverage of the Shall Not Be Recognized project with an interview with project co-creator Will Fellows.
Related posts:
No comments yet.