With Shibuya Ward’s approval of gay marriage earlier this year and the great success of the Rainbow Pride, LGBT visibility in Tokyo seems to be growing in leaps and bounds. To promote this visibility and more acceptance, as well as to create a society where everyone can be included, non-profit organisation Good Aging Yells started Out in Japan, a photographic project with aims to capture 10,000 portraits of LGBT people by 2020 (yes, that year again). To make things more manageable, however, they’ve divided this huge number into smaller projects, with three completed to date. So far these have been led by Singapore-born photographer Leslie Kee, who is looking to shoot 1,000 ‘coming out’ portraits by his 45th birthday on April 5, 2016.
To date, Kee has shot a fair amount of those 1,000 portraits for Out in Japan, with over a hundred people attending the events in Harajuku (#001) and Shibuya (#002), and Kansai (#003) a few months ago, raking up 106 portraits of 120 people. #004 has yet to be released, but was planned for Tokyo, with Fukuoka apparently being next in the rainbow-shooting line-up. To mark the web launch of #003, Out in Japan teamed up with Alfa Romeo’s Greenfunding platform to crowdfund Kee’s attempt. They reached, and overshot, their goal of ¥1 million, which means Kee will definitely keep snapping around the country until April. And with sponsors including the likes of Gap and Shiseido, we’re pretty sure the LGBT love will spread far.
For more info and to keep up to date with their latest projects, check out their website, Facebook or Twitter, and watch this vid...
– By Kirsty Bouwers