Since Friday 10 June, the Pride Photo exhibition has been in Almere and right at the opening there was a commotion. A photo showing the partially covered genitals of a man (after transition) was displayed frontally at the bus station crossing. It was quickly moved to another spot, so that people were not immediately confronted with this photo when they stepped off the bus.

This year the Zandvoorts Museum presents an exhibition in the theme of the rainbow community. This year the group exhibition in the 2022 edition of Zandvoort Pride will present a sellection of portraits. Arjan Spannenburg exhibits his works LOVED, RAPTURE and PERSISTANCE. They can be seen from July 1 to August 7, 2022 in the Zandvoort Museum at the exhibition Portraits with Pride.

Around the world, the LGBT community celebrates their activism every year during the month of June. During this special month, various events are organized worldwide to raise awareness for the acceptance of LGBT+ people. The month of June was chosen at the time in response to the Stonewall riots that took place in June 1969 at the time.

With the collapse of Afghanistan in 2021, after my last mission, I began to wonder more and more if my work within the Defense Department was of any use. The decision by the United States to withdraw from the mission caused it to end sooner than planned. As a result, the Taliban rapidly threw the territory back at least 20 years. It was soon back to being an extremist, oppressive, religious country and certainly not a place I would ever want to go again.

You may be thinking, why is an artist or photographer concerned with the LGBT+ acronym? 

Who do you fantasize about? Who is your crush? Do you already know who you are really attracted to?

2021 has been a very challenging year for many photographers, but also for Kuala Lumpur Photo Awards (KLPA). Despite this, they still managed to keep this international photo contest going.

Everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet. An age-old novel between two people who loved each other. It resulted in a sad end, because the world did not allow their love. Even today we see that society holds back love between people for various reasons. Sometimes this is based on; origin, religion, age difference, gender identity and even someone's sexuality.

During our search for statistics on the violence against LGBT+ people, we eventually came in contact with the Pink Police Force in Rotterdam. In an interview with NU.nl, they told us they saw an increase in the amount and intensity of incidents.

On October 11, 2021, Roze in Blauw Rotterdam was in the news via NU.nl because they found that both in terms of number of incidents and intensity, LGBT+ violence has increased in recent years. For me, this was reason enough to talk to the police again, as they had previously told me that the police did not keep any figures on this. How this all works and how we can tackle together the LGBT+ violence in our society that's what I like to elaborate on.

It makes no difference to us in how you identify. Whether you are cisgender, nonbinary, transgender, agender, gender fluid, or prefer another gender? Please let us know, and we will always ask you for the pronouns you are most comfortable with.