The Gay Men Project

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

Kevin Truong is the New York-based photographer behind The Gay Men Project; a creative labor of love that’s already seen him meet, photograph and interview over 700 gay men around the World.

Having spent the past few years traveling countries including Canada, India, England, France and Australia (where he profiled openly gay Greens MP Alex Greenwich), Truong has received an impressive amount of exposure for the project, which was partly funded on Kickstarter, being featured on NBC news and listed as one of 2014’s leading men by Instinct Magazine.

“Basically I’m trying to photograph as many gay men as I can.” He writes on his website.

“My goal is to create a platform, a visibility on some level, and a resource for others who may not be as openly gay. A visual catalog of gay men and their stories.”

It’s essentially Humans of New York, only global and gay (not to mention the more striking photographs).

I’m sure you’re asked this all the bloody time (and I promise I’ll try to keep the rest of this interview somewhat interesting) but what initially inspired you to start The Gay Man Project?

I always say the Gay Men Project started as a class project while an art student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but it really starts the moment I came out to my mom. There I was, twenty-five, coming out to my fifty-six-year-old Vietnamese mother, telling her I was gay. And she looked so confused. Later she told me she was trying to figure out if I was going to look different—visually. Like if I was going to start wearing a dress, because that was the only reference point she had for a gay man. So in some ways I started the project for people like my mom, to provide more accurate and broader reference points, and really, to show that when it comes down to it, we’re all individuals.

As a gay man, I’ve occasionally struggled to understand my particular role within queer history/society. Has working on the project given you a stronger sense of placement and/or purpose within the international LGBT community?

This is a great question, and sometimes I actually question the idea of an LGBTQ community. Let me explain. I completely believe there are times when it’s important to adhere to the larger LGBTQ umbrella, but I also think it’s important to understand each subgroup has a unique set of issues and goals that don’t necessarily pertain to the other subgroups. For example, when I was in Chile I interviewed Jaime Parada, the first openly gay elected official in Chile, and he stressed he doesn’t believe in the idea of an LGBTQ community, but rather a population. Community implies a shared experience, but if you look at Chile, the fights are very different. In Chile, transgender individuals are fighting for the right to have a legal identity, or simply put, a legal recognition of their name. This is a fight not necessarily shared by gay men and women in that country. Or you look at South Africa, and you see cases of lesbians being raped by men to disprove their homosexuality, and we begin to see that this idea of there always being one common and shared set of goals is not always the case. That said, there will be times when there is a common goal, and I think the aim of greater visibility can be considered such an example. So in that regard, I hope the Gay Men Project can bring a greater visibility of gay and queer men into the discussion, in turn promoting greater visibility to all individuals that identify as LGBTQ.

Gay men come up against a seemingly endless list of boring stereotypes, many of which are perpetuated by queer depictions on screen and in the media. Did this project affirm or challenge some of these stereotypes for you?

Look, I’ll say stereotypes exist for a reason. So yes, as I traveled around the world, I did notice a handful of Madonna posters in bedrooms, ranging from in the Philippines to the Czech Republic. But when you’ve met over seven gay and queer men around the world, like I have, these stereotypes tend to get lost amongst the strong individual traits that each person possesses.

Gay men meet up with strangers from the internet all the time, but usually for casual sex and blowies. What was it like meeting so many interesting gay men under a creative pretense?

It was like going on seven hundred dates! But seriously, it kind of was. Imagine a first date when you’re meeting someone for the first time, and asking them questions, and sizing them up physically—that’s what I was doing, seven hundred times across thirty-seven countries. But I also photograph each individual during that first encounter, so it creates for an interesting dynamic.

Surely you met some that you connected with. Be honest – did physical attraction and sexuality ever come into play after a few beers?

Definitely! And sometimes it didn’t take any beer to make it happen.

Gay men (myself included) seem to ricochet between having overt pride in their sexuality and not wanting to be defined or compartmentalized by it. Your project appears (at least on the outset) to do the latter. Why?

I completely agree, and there have been plenty of individuals whom I approached who have had no interest in being a part of the project for that exact reason. I’ll say this. I’m a photographer and I have a project called the Gay Men Project that I’ve thrown out into the world. And the world can do what it wants with it. There are some people that will never find any use to the project, because they don’t like the term gay. The prefer queer. There will be others who love the project, but only because they like looking at pictures of people’s homes and apartments. And then there will be the kid in Brazil who spends all his time reading only the stories written in Portuguese, or the guy in Cleveland that will only comment on the posts about older gay men. There are people that take a huge pride in being gay or queer, and others that see it as completely irrelevant. But let’s not forget about the millions of individuals around the world who don’t have the privilege of making this distinction, because being gay or queer is still a huge burden, something that causes them to feel a great deal of shame. There are people that write to me and tell me there is not a single gay or queer person in their town or village, and reading of the lives of others who have more freedom then themselves offers a great level of comfort. I think most the participants of the Gay Men Project recognize this, and in some part are sharing a piece of their lives for those who don’t have the freedom to do so.

Now that you’ve tackled the subject of gay men so successfully, what’s next for you?

I have no fucking clue, to be honest! Hopefully I’ll have the privilege of continuing to do work that I believe in and gives me a strong sense of purpose, much like the Gay Men Project has given to me for the past four years.

For more on The Gay Men Project, visit the official site here.