Everyone is our neighbour...

"Everyone is our neighbour, no matter what race (sic), creed or colour."

Queen Elisabeth II

"In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945."

Queen Elisabeth II

"I am reminded of a lady of about my age who was asked by an earnest, little granddaughter the other day 'Granny, can you remember the Stone Age?' Whilst that may be going a bit far, the older generation are able to give a sense of context as well as the wisdom of experience which can be invaluable."

Queen Elisabeth II

"Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves–from our recklessness or our greed."

Queen Elisabeth II

photographs (all Magnum) by Eve Arnold (first and second) and Martin Parr (third) via 

Feeling One's Underrepresentation in the Beauty Industry

"Mirror/Mirror: Survey of Women's Reflections of Beauty, Image and Media" is a survey conducted in 2019. It found that 64% of women aged 39 to 54 and 74% of women aged 55 to 73 feel that the beauty industry creates products not having people their age in mind and that they are underrepresented in beauty advertising. More than 70% of the women across both age groups state that they would be more likely to purchase from brands that are more inclusive in terms of age. 76% of women aged 22 to 38 agree with this statement (via).

photographs of Joan Crawford by Eve Arnold (1959) via 

Coming out, coming home, coming with: Models of queer sexuality and the role of culture

In 2015, the video "Coming Home" appeared on Chinese social media, released by an organisation that advocates for "a U.S.-style of coming out among Chinese LGBTI". The video targeted parents of queer children and received more than 250 million views before the government made the website remove the "gay-friendly content" . 

Coming Home narrates the story of a middle-class gay man, Fangchao, who comes out to his parents on the phone. Fangchao’s father scolds him when he comes out: “Since you have already come/gone out, don’t come home again!”(PFLAG China, 2015). With this pithy statement, the scriptwriter makes conspicuous the opposing relational models of coming out versus coming home for Chinese queer subjects. There is a play on words (chuqu 出去) in the dialogue to mean both coming out (as a queer subject) and going out (as in leaving the family). This video weaves together simultaneous movements away from and toward the family: coming out takes on the meaning of leaving the family in order to gain sexual freedom; coming home (huijia 回家), on the other hand,brings to mind the idea of coming back to the family, reining in and covering queer desires in order to stay close to the family. In this rendering, coming out is antithetical to coming home: if you come out, then do not think about coming home again.

Fangchao's coming out turns him into an outcast. Two years later, so the flash-forward in the video, his mother calls him telling him to visit the family during the Chinese New Year: "No matter who you are, you are still our son." At the end, family love overrules and the parents accept their gay son. The video ends with mothers speaking out and encouraging viewers to come out to their families.

The messages of this video are clear: dear parents of Chinese queers, remember how much you love your children and be sure to invite them to come (back) home; dear Chinese queers, come out and then wait for your parents (probably your mother) to invite you to come home.

Coming out and coming home can be seen as models of queer sexuality, each offering norms, aspirations, prescriptions. Huang and Brouwer (2018) see coming home as an indigenous model and coming out as an exogenous one. and elaborate a third model - coming with. The authors conducted interviews with 13 Chinese queer subjects to ...

investigate the distinctness of these models, their points of dissonance and consonance,and the ways in which queer subjects take them up (partially or fully, temporarily or enduringly), revise them, or reject them. Broadly, we express a critical/cultural orientationas we “examine multiple axes of power and oppression …and consider culture to be a starting point for theory and analysis”(Ono, 2009, p. 77). More specifically, we hope to contribute to the projects of culturalizing queer theory and queering intercultural communication. Aligned with these projects, we stay alert to “the ways in which western queer formations,”like the coming-out model, “travel, by choice and by coercion, imposing western values and ideals on non-western cultures within and outside of westerncountries”(Chávez, 2013, p. 87). As we investigate if, why, and how Chinese queer subjects come out to themselves, friends, peers, and/or family members (cf., Bie & Tang, 2016) or choose tactics more aligned with coming home, we feature the particularities of everyday life as Chinese queer subjects express them, and we aspire to counter “the cultural reductionism”(Ban, Sastry, & Dutta, 2013, p. 283) that is persistent in orientalist ways of understanding China.

The questions asked are highly interesting since culture might be a neglected aspect in transnational queer discourse. Coming-out rates are, in fact, relatively low in China (as of 2016, 3% of gay and bisexual men, 6% of lesbian and bisexual women). Not the public but family, particularly parents, is what keeps them most from coming out, 75% of gay and bisexual men and 81% of lesbian and bisexueal women reported "that their primary source of distress" is the family. Only 19% of gay/bisexual men and 25% of lesbian/bisexual women said that they had come out to "some family members".

Transnational LGBTI movements privilege a queer politics that is oppositional and confrontational, with an emphasis on the visibility of sexual identity. Critical sexualities scholars have argued that the predominant narrative of “coming out”is built on a particular kind of queer experience and geography, which is usually from the standpoint of white,middle-class, urban U.S. citizenship (e.g., Chávez, 2013). Due to the transnational circulation of Euro-American queer discourses, identitarian and visibility frames of queerness (Puar, 2007), which endorse a confrontational politics of coming out, have become an increasingly prominent discourse in Chinese LGBTI movements. The movement organization PFLAG China, for example, not only sponsored the video we featured in the introduction, but also sponsored a coming-out story competition for lesbians, gay men, and allies (Bie & Tang, 2016). Transnational queer discourse’s emphasis on a homosexual identity and the politics of visibility has become a new discursive resource that Chinese queer subjects can draw on in order to fight for their sexual freedom. It risks becoming a new hegemony that Chinese queer subjects might be expected to embrace to become intelligible members in a transnational LGBTI imaginary—a form of peer pressure, to use the words of our interviewee Ada, that Chinese queer subjects face. Indeed, an analysis of our data shows that coming out is an important narrative in being queer in contemporary China.

Also of interest...

Some of the interview participants take up the imperatives and practices of coming outas offered by Western discourses. However, several take up coming out in partial and revised ways or reject it altogether as unimaginable, unfeasible, or unsustainable. Partial and revised uptake is mediated by several factors, including the cultural principles of pulu (铺路) and suzhi (素质). Repeatedly during the interviews, the two popular discourses of suzhi (“quality”) and pulu (“path-paving”) emerged as the parameters or preconditions of coming out. The discourse of suzhi/quality is essentially a class issue related to the emergence of a “rainbow economy.”Increasingly, Chinese queer subjects are interpellated into the consumerist position of being “out and proud.”But not all queer subjects answer the hail of interpellation as good consumers. Economic difference predicts whether one is a good consumer, and thus a proper queer or not. Those who do not or cannot afford to be good consumers are sometimes condemned as lacking “culture,”or described as “low quality”(di suzhi), and thus not qualified to be a “good homosexual”(see Rofel,2007, pp. 103–106).

A 19-year-old mentioned class differences in connection with coming out:

I remember when the CEO [chief executive officer] of Apple came out, everybody was talkingabout it. I remember how people responded to it: this is something of the rich. I think whenyou are financially well off, people think that [being gay] is OK. If you are not, then play notricks—get married and have children!

In line with this view, many interviewers reported to prepare themselves and their parents to better respond to the coming out by working on financial success, by "paving their way". Financial success is seen as a precondition for coming out.

The pulu/path-paving discourse suggests a “two-step model to coming out”(Kam,2012, p. 99)—first, to stand up as a “successful”member of society, leaving the issue of sexuality unaddressed, and then to come out as an “outstanding”(youxiu) daughter/son but “less desirable”queer subject. Such a “two-step model”relies on the recognition of,rather than challenges the criteria of, heteronormative society. “The recognition of queers,”Ahmed (2010, p. 106) points out, “can be narrated as the hope or promise of becoming acceptable, where in being acceptable you must become acceptable to a world that has already decided what is acceptable.”The discourse of pulu/path-paving promisesa gift from the “tolerant” heteronormative family, “which conceals queer labor and struggle”(p. 106). Complicity with heteronormativity, in turn, produces a kind of homo-normativity for Chinese queers.

Coming home, on the other hand, focuses on the desire or obligation to remain close to the family. Familial piety is an ethic, a priority. In China, it is regarded as the mot common approach historically and today. Hence, key assumptions of transnational queer movements are questioned since, in many Western societies, they are built on the notion of individualism, confrontational politics that might work there but are not automatically the best way to achieve liberation in community-oriented societies stressing the importance of social harmony. In line with this, the Chinese parents' main concern would be less about their children's identification as lesbian or gay but their marginalisaiton within the family "making the child a nonbeing in Chinese culture".

In conventional Chinese culture, one’s sexual normativity is less defined by one’s sexual preference than by one’s willingness and ability to fulfill one’s filial duties—in particular,the duty to reproduce (Chou, 2000, pp. 24–25). In other words, one’s sexual deviance is not determined primarily by the sex of one’s sexual partner(s) but by the (lack of) adherence to the ascribed filial duty of bearing children. According to the Confucian logic inChinese society, having same-sex desires does not absolve one from the responsibility of engaging in heterosexual activities that ensure the continuation of the family’s bloodline.

The coming-with model stresses the point that parents are not an option to choose but always an integral part of one's life. This approach combines "the preservation of space for one's queer sexuality with tactics that stay with the family either by cultivating parental harmony or actively interrogating heteronormative family structures".

the contours of an alternative model began to emerge as it became clear in the interviews that queer subjects are necessarily “closeted” under the familial discourse, as suggested by the polarizing construction between the Chinese family and sexual freedom, and that Chinese queer subjects do not agree with every connotation of the family institution. The interviewees described numerous ways that queer desires are still possible to circulate within the family institution by living with rather than turning away from the family institution.

The authors come to the conclusion that Chinese queer subjects prefer the coming-with approach that makes it possible to integrate both familial belonging and sexual identification. Coming out, on the other hand, is an approach that is associated with turning away from the family. And coming home would again mean leaving the heteronormative family uncontested (Huang & Brouwer, 2018).

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- Huang, S. & Brouwer, D. (2018). Coming out, coming home, coming with: Models of queer sexuality in contemporary China. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 11(2), 1-20, link
- photograph by Eve Arnold (China 1979) via

The Art World. Sharing the Same Prejudices We Face in the Real World.

"When one thinks of the art world, one thinks of a place of openness and tolerance -- yet that is hardly the case. The ‘art world’ shares the same prejudice we face in the real world. That said, the illusion of togetherness that has been constructed around the art world makes said reality even more toxic. Forms of sexism, racism, and ageism dominate art culture just under the surface -- which dictates our collective knowledge of art history. This is a topic that few gallery owners want to discuss -- because it is a topic that, more often than not, reveals a world of bigotry and unnecessary challenges placed before artists." Brian Sherwin



photograph of Silvana Mangano by Eve Arnold (1956) via

Eve Arnold (III): No Woman in Inverted Commas

"I was green and awed by the male founder members. I hated the 'there-there little girl' pat on the head attitude of a few of my colleagues." When, a great many years later, she was asked what it had been like to be a woman in a man's world, she replied: "It's man in a woman's world!" In fact, she felt that being a woman was an advantage, "a marvelous plus to photographing".

At the time she arrived, photo-journalism was dominated by men. She helped opening the door for women and beacme "a role model for the legion of women phtographers who came after her" (de Giovanni, 2015)-

Twenty-five years ago, when I became a photojournalist, I was looked on as someone apart—a “career lady,” a “woman photographer.” My colleagues were not spoken of in inverted commas; they were not “career men” or “men photographers”. I was not happy about it, but realized as have women before me that it was a fundamental part of female survival to play the assigned role. I could not fight against those attitudes. I needed to know more about other women to try to understand what made me acquiesce in this situation.

It was then that I started my project, photographing and talking to women. I became both observer and participant. I photographed girl children and women; the rich and the poor; the migratory potato picker on Long Island and the Queen of England; the nomad bride in the Hindu Kush waiting for a husband she had never seen, and the Hollywood Queen Bee whose life was devoted to a regimen of beauty care. There were the Zulu woman whose child was dying of hunger and women mourning their dead in Hoboken, New Jersey. I filmed in harems in Abu Dhabi, in bars in Cuba, and in the Vatican in Rome. There was birth in London and betrothal in the Caucasus, divorce in Moscow and protest marches of black women in Virginia. There were the known and the unknown—and always those marvelous faces.

I am not a radical feminist, because I don’t believe that siege mentality works. But I know something of the problems and the inequities of being a woman, and over the years the women I photographed talked to me about themselves and their lives. Each had her own story to tell- uniquely female but also uniquely human.

Themes recur again and again in my work. I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.

I realize now that through my work these past twenty-five years I have been searching for myself, my time, and the world I live in. Eve Arnold

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- de Giovanni, J. (2015). Eve Arnold. Magnum Legacy. Prestel.
- photograph (Havana, 1954) via

Eve Arnold (II): Photographing Black Bourgeoisie and Apartheid

In the 1950s, in segregated New York, Eve Arnold ventured to Harlem to capture the world of shows where she hardly went unnoticed. The audiences were all-black and reacted with surprise to her, mostly smiling. Her approach was new, instead of fashion per se she documented skin whitening and hair straightening, recorded social history, as she said. But what was even more new was showing black models.

In 1961, she photographed Malcolm X for the first time; the two developed a strong friendship. When she followed him to rallies and meetings, people spat at her and shouted: "Kill the white bitch". She was escorted from her hotel every day to stay unharmed, every morning started with a phone call from someone with a Southern accent telling her to get "the hell out of town before it was too late". But she stayed two weeks during which she also photographed a rally organised by the American Nazi Party. The moment she raised her camera to shoot George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the party, one Nazi said: "I'll make a bar of soap out of you." Arnold answered: "As long as it isn't a lampshade". She continued taking photographs.

In 1964, she documented the life of privileged black US-Americans "The Black Bourgeoisie", a segment that had been hardly explored.

"I spent the last weekend in Philadelphia doing my negro story, and am just beginning to see dayllight and focus - those who made it in spite of the fact that they are negro, and those who are making it now because they are negro - the whole climate has changed in this country, and now they are accepted because of the spending power (20 billions (sic)) - as great as that of Canada - and it is a hell of an interesting story. I am getting a huge charge out of it."

In 1973, the editor of the Sunday Times asked her if she could capture the "tragic and explosive" situation in South Africa and illustrate what it was like to be black in the apartheid system. Eve Arnold anticipated resistance and when applying for a visa told the consul at the embassy that she wanted to photograph animals and people. It took her only two days to get the visa. In South Africa she had to apply for permission to enter the "homelands" of the blacks segregated from where whites were living. It was certainly one way to discourage photographers and journalists. Arnold, however, waited it out and travelled the country waiting for the permission. Once in the homelands, she had to check in with the police every day, or rather, was supposed to do so. Arnold worked outside police hours and by doing so could take photographs that would not have been possible under their surveillance: starving children, malnourished pregnant women receiving very limited and primitive medical care. She witnessed systematic cruelty she had never seen before, families that were split apart, men sent away thousands of miles to work in mines getting a salary of 46 cents a month and the possibility to return home to see their families only once a year. Men worked in terrible conditions, women were often unskilled and illiterate, both doomed to poverty. Her plan was to document the life of a black family living under apartheid. Due to the distances and bureaucratic barriers, documenting one family's life was not possible. Instead, she made two stories, one about men working in a gold mine and one about women and children in a homeland. After three months she returned home (de Giovanni, 2015).

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- de Giovanni, J. (2015). Eve Arnold. Magnum Legacy. Prestel.
- photograph (South Africa) via

Eve Arnold (I): Passion for Social Justice

Eve Arnold (1912-2012) was born in Philadelphia into a poor family of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. In 1943, she married Arnold Arnold, a Jewish refugee from Hitler Germany.

"Although Eve was never overtly political, her passion for social justice and her curiosity about people's lives made her a perfect witness to the emerging currents and trends of the time."

Eve Arnold photographed the Davis family, descendants of early settlers and US-American prototypes, at meetings, having a church supper, ... and after a while suggested that she also photograph the migrants working for them in their fields picking strwaberries, sorting potatoes, living in overcrowded camps without toilet facilities and water. The living conditions  shocked Arnold, her photographs were called "another step in Eve's development as a photojournalist with a deep social conscience". She was ready to tackle social injustice, "not a popular subject then". 

"As a second-generation American, daughter of Russian immigrants, growing up during the Depression, the reality I knew well was poverty and deprivation. So I could identify easily with laborers who followed the potato crop north along the Eastern seaboard, settling in each new area as the harvest was ready for them." Eve Arnold

Once, Arnold came up with the controversial idea to photograph hearings at the House Un-American Activities Committee. "As the daughter of parents who had escaped the horrors of the Russian pogroms, she felt deeply for anyone who suffered for their religious of political beliefs". In order to understand the situation better, she researched and found people who had suffered at McCarthy's hand and were still living in fear. When she went to Washington, she was the only woman reporter, McCarthy singled her out, went to her, rested his hand on her shoulder. Reporters were watching her, other journalists thought McCarthy had befriended her, hence ignored her.

Aged 70, she travelled across her homeland where she found the social and political climate troubling: homelessness, HIV epidemic, mortgage foreclosures... She decided not to take black-and-white photographs since she was afraid they would make the images too bleak. At the beginning of the journey she visited the Navajo Nation, then continued photographing miners, strippers, construction workers, prisoners, church choirs, immigrants, queer transvestite nuns, and the Ku Klux Klan ... the last one she called her worst experience (de Giovanni, 2015).

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- de Giovanni, J. (2015). Eve Arnold. Magnum Legacy. Prestel.
- photograph via 

Muslims, the Perils of Perception Survey & the Index of Ignorance

According to the latest "Ipsos Perils of Perception" survey carried out in forty countries, most countries hugely overestimate the proportion of Muslims in their population. In Britain, for instance, people think that 1 in 6 Britons is Muslim (in fact, it is fewer than 1 in 20), that 15% of the population are Muslim (instead of the 4.8%). In addition, Britons believe that the Muslim population is growing to a much greater extent than it actually is: 22% by the year 2020 (they will probably make around 6%).



Great Britain, however, is far from being the most extreme example as it is the third most accurate country in Ipsos's so-called "Index of Ignorance". Most of the countries are much more wrong. In France, the average guess is that 31% of the population is Muslim (it is 7.5%), Canada and the United States guess 17% (it is 3.2% and 1%).
The level of growth over the next few years is highly overestimated, too. In France, people tend to think that 40% of the population will be Muslim by 2020 (the projection is 8.3%). The United States has an average guess of 23% (the projection is 1.1%) (via).




The German city of Hamburg carried out a similar survey in 2014 and came to the conclusion that only 8% of its inhabitants were close to reality when guessing the proportion of the Muslim population (via).




Photographs (mostly?) by Eve Arnold (The Nation of Islam, 1961) via and via and via and via and via