Born to commemorate the so-called “Stonewall Riots” of June 1969, Pride month is now a consolidated reality in many cities around the world, which provides—sometimes with marathons that start in the middle of the month and continue until the symbolic dates of the 27th and 28th— activities also very busy, but always very colourful (and in many cases, as of this edition, newly in attendance). One of the initiatives that uses photography as its main language, and which is really worth mentioning, is the Pride Photo Award.
Promoted by the Pride Photo Foundation, a non–profit platform based in Amsterdam which has been working since 2010 to bring to our attention stories far removed from stereotypes, the competition encourages the submission of photographic works by people from «all walks of life», as the organisation’s website states, «regardless of gender, sexual preference, race, political belief, religion or nationality. The only requirement is that the photos represent any form of sexual and/or gender diversity».
The foundation's declared aim is to promote and encourage the acceptance of simple but slippery concepts (and all too often instrumentalised, see the querelle over the Zan bill, but also the hypocrisy of the new Hungarian law on the "protection of children's rights" and, last but not least, the controversy over the rainbow lighting of the Munich stadium during the European Football Championships), such as sexual and gender diversity, or the plurality and fluidity of expression and identity that the LGBTQI+ community conceptually and physically witnesses.
The exhibition that comes out of this initiative every year is itinerant (until November in various Dutch cities) and, for this edition, outdoors. And if we can finally accept as a positive fact that it will be impossible to go back to an “old” normality, where there were those who arrogated to themselves the right to define what was normal and what was not, there could never be a more appropriate theme for these times than that of the 2020/2021 edition of Photo Pride: Curiosity (subtitle: the compass of our passions).