This year at the photo exhibition at QueerFest presents a photo project that explores the labels the queer communities use to define their sexual orientations and gender identities. The author of “The Identity Project” is San Francisco-based photographer Sarah Deragon.

The project was born in January 2014, when Sarah posted a black-and-white photograph of herself on Facebook, with the label “queer femme.” It did not stop there: Sarah began to photograph queer people, originally planning to create a small project, but she ended up with 250 portraits in the first month alone.

Sarah believes that her project is very important in its ability to take apart widely accepted notions of what it means to be LGBTQ in today’s society. The project’s participants not only play with concepts that already exist, but also create new and unique ways of describing their identities, such as “transgenderqueer” or “lady-gay.” This is a way the participants can express pride in being themselves in today’s difficult and constantly changing conditions.

At the festival, Deragon’s project will be presented as a video installation, and Sarah herself will organize a photo session for the queer communities of Saint Petersburg on September 20. Please follow our announcements, and feel free to take this opportunity to reexamine your own identity. See you at QueerFest!

The Identity Project Update - Sarah from Sarah Deragon on Vimeo.