For the last six years, photographer Kamila K Stanley has documented the Queer community in Brazil as they navigate the violent repercussions of Bolsonaro’s rule and subsequent legacy. The result, “Tenha Orgulho” [“Take Pride”], is a series of collaborative images with one mission: to build an archive of resistance offering a potent symbol of hope for Queer people when they need it most. Stanley tells writer Gem Fletcher about the importance of bearing witness, photography as collaboration and the collective power born from harnessing love in a time of hate.
Kamila K Stanley’s relationship with Brazil began many years ago. As part of her course in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at a university in London, the British-Polish photographer moved to Brazil to attend the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro. While living there, she found a second family in the Queer community, building friendships that lasted long after her course. In 2018, when far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro came into power, Stanley—who was living in Vienna at the time—became deeply concerned about her friends’ safety after a rapid rise in homophobic hate crimes across the country.
“It was horrifying to witness,” Stanley recalls. “Friends were physically attacked. Families were falling apart. People were forced to move out of their homes. Within weeks, homophobic attacks in Brazil surged—and rose steadily throughout the duration of his presidency. Society was becoming even more polarized. I felt an urgent pull to return to the country and support my friends. I wanted to understand and record what was happening and figure out if photography could be a tool in this resistance.”
“Tenha Orgulho,” which means “Take Pride” in Portuguese, is a rich communal portrait of Brazil’s Queer community as they navigate the violent repercussions of a right-wing government. Stanley presents moments of freedom and inhibition set against the country’s iconic urban and rural landscape. Lovers embrace, friends connect and individuals take up space. These empowering portraits are paired with personal testimonies, shining a light on the dichotomies born from a life of oppression: hope versus despair, prosperity versus compromise and safety versus violence. Through multifaceted storytelling, Stanley embraces the complexity of the situation while rooting the project in gestures of love and care.
This constant threat to your existence is a living nightmare, heightened by the distinct lack of justice.
Like many countries around the world, Brazil is full of contradictions when it comes to the human rights of its Queer citizens. On one hand, the country is renowned for hosting the largest Pride parade on Earth and yet almost half the world’s LGBTQ+ murders are committed there.
“Junior, a dancer and designer, told me about being attacked during the 2018 carnival,” Stanley says. “It was the first time he ever felt menaced due to his sexuality. He was singled out amongst the celebratory crowd and beaten by a group of men in broad daylight. Likewise, dancers Bruxa and Lauis, a couple living in Morro da Providência, the oldest favela in Brazil, were attacked in front of their house, by a transphobic woman, with a wooden bat. The local police refused to take their complaint. This constant threat to your existence is a living nightmare, heightened by the distinct lack of justice.”
While oppression often forces marginalized groups to shrink or hide, Stanley and her collaborators do not dignify rising homophobia and transphobia with silence. Instead, “Tenha Orgulho” is about the power of presence, illustrating how coming together and sharing our stories is both a mode of resistance and a potent survival strategy.
“Tenha Orgulho” started small but grew quickly. She began making portraits with her inner circle in Rio de Janeiro. As word began to spread about the project, it set off a domino effect, with participants coming forward from all over the country. With her camera in a backpack, Stanley traveled to São Paulo and Salvador, and later into the hinterlands of Bahia, Goiás, Brasília and Minas Gerais, creating a diverse archive of the Queer experience during this highly politicized time.
While “Tenha Orgulho” explores the politics of existence in a changing culture, it was also important to Stanley to reconcile the visual stereotypes around Latino Queerness through a process of co-creation with her collaborators. “I wanted to see if it’s possible to dismantle the medium’s long history as a tool of oppression and instead use it as a tool in the resistance,” Stanley says about the responsibility of representation. “I’m interested in rethinking agency within our medium, and I wanted to create portraits people were proud of. Everyone I worked with played an active role in the direction of their image: location, styling, pose and lighting. It was about really listening to how they wanted to be seen.”
Stanley’s collaborators recall the transformative effect of their co-created sessions. Stylist and multimedia artist Miranda says: “When Trans people are seen and shown in non-marginalized spaces, it’s always a victory. Mastering my image gave me the possibility to occupy different spaces and go against what was being projected upon me. I think our testimonies of life and joy are very powerful, avoiding the usual clichés about us that the mass media insist on reproducing.”
It wasn’t enough for Stanley and her collaborators to bear witness to the last six years of unrest; they also wanted to actively reclaim public space. Using faixas de ráfia—banners characterized by bold colors and a unique font painted by local artisans, and used for everything from commercial messages to marriage proposals—the group created a series of symbolic interventions in public space. Defiant yet poetic phrases like “To love is a verb, an action, and a decolonial strategy,” and “To love is never in vain!” adorn the handmade banners which they photographed in symbolic locations from outside Bruxa and Lauis’ home in the favelas to Praça XV, the historic pier where thousands of ships from the transatlantic slave trade arrived in Rio de Janeiro.
While forged through devastating chaos and fragility, Stanley and her community embrace the labor of activism as an act of love. “Tenha Orgulho” offers a potent message of hope and optimism to the Queer community when they need it most.