Subject: Fwd: "Young Gay Photographers" -- Column by Patricia Nell Warren
From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 01:32:03 -0400

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NEWS YOU DIDN'T SEE ON TV

A commentary by Patricia Nell Warren                      
5/8/96

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YOUNG GAY PHOTOGRAPHERS CELEBRATE THEIR TALENT

By Patricia Nell Warren

Network news anchors did not report the winners in a gay-youth photography 
project  sponsored by Project Yes in Los Angeles.  But Chris Balian, Unayzah
Belviz, 
Ezekiel Gutierrez and Aaron Almanzo  were definitely Oscar-size  winners.  
The big prize was a $300 gift certificate for photo equipment.   However,
these four 
young people -- and the other 26 girls and boys who participated -- won an
even 
greater prize, namely  a new measure of pride  and professionalism.

Project Yes is a gay-youth-empowerment program newly  available to
schools and community in the Los Angeles area.  It is a joint venture between
the
L.A. Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center and the L.A. Alliance for a
Drug Free Society and Community.  The photo project  included 
mentoring by several volunteer photographers, who helped the teen entrants  
to get a firmer grip on professional basics before they entered a print.

On May 1, a dozen judges, including myself, assembled at the
Youth Center on Santa Monica Blvd. to view displays  in four different
categories.   Choosing was hard -- so many of the images were poignant 
and powerful  images of how gay kids see life.   For many
of us judges,  faces in the photographs were  already familiar.   L.A. is a
big place, with tens of thousands of homeless kids, and 650,000 enrolled in
the schools.  Yet there is a hard core of standout teens  -- striving,
struggling young individuals known to the service orgs, shelters, community
institutions, school district personnel, and the district's Gay and Lesbian 
Education Commission.

On the evening of Friday, May 3, in a packed reception room at the Community
Services Center, it was Oscar time.   TV actor Wilson Cruz, the MC,  led many
rounds of warm applause for the winners.  One by one, faces glowing, the 13
third-, second- and first-place winners (there was a tie for one third)
  went to the 
podium to get a certificate, a prize and a long-stemmed red rose.

"They're all winners," emphasized Cynthia Bond.  She  is in charge of Youth
Services at the Center, as well as co-chair of the project.

Several contestants are  personally known to me, going back two years to my 
volunteer teaching at L.A.'s EAGLES Center.   EAGLES is part of  a
school-district  
program for gay teen dropouts fleeing  bias in their home schools, who
want to get back in the classroom.  Christina Martinez, a tiny Latina  in
shaved head
and baggies, seldom smiled.  She struggled to school maybe twice  a month,
though she helped me  with the yearbook graphics and mentioned her interest
in
photography.   At the Project Yes awards, I saw a new Christina, eyes aglow,
her small brown fist clenching her rose and her second-place prize. 

"I'm really moving ahead... going to finish school in a year," Christina
said, "and
I definitely want to pursue photography as a career."

Chris Balian and Zeke Gutierrez logged a similar  struggle -- and similar
progress.  
With his schoolteacher mother's encouragement, Chris doggedly attended
photography 
classes, put together a professional-grade portfolio to show around -- but
was 
often strapped for cash for developing.  Both young men published their first

photos online,  in the YouthArts West e-zine that I co-publish with John
Waiblinger.  
Chris will graduate from EAGLES this spring.

"I'm still in shock," Chris  told me a day later, relishing the fact that he
(like the three other top winners) could now purchase a good flash
attachment.

Coming out and staying out, for gay kids today, goes way beyond issues of
sex. 
Pride  and professional skills are often hard to get  in  a time of economic
chaos.  
Faced with changing laws and  ugly controversy in many  school districts, 
gay youth  face enormous challenges merely to finish school, choose a career,
 
get  trained and find economic independence.  These kids are far from the
myth (gleefully promoted by the radical right) that  "gays don't need
human-rights 
protection because they're rich and politically empowered."

Worse, few gay kids  live in areas  like L.A. County, where school district
and  
community offer them a wealth  of targeted support programs, from Project 10 
in high schools to youth services offered by the Gay and Lesbian Community 
Services Center, PFLAG, the MCC of L.A., Project Yes, and others. 

Following awards, the framed winning photographs went on a month-long display
in the Center lobby. Days later, gay Angelenos were still thronging to see
them.
Following that, the exhibition will move to L.A.'s City Hall.  Meanwhile, the

photographs will have their own Web page  in YouthArts West, so look
for these compelling images  in http://www.qcc.org/yap.

Young hands damp with  anxiety and eagerness -- brown hands, black hands,
white hands.  Each holding a rose,  symbol of the  preciousness of Life.   

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Patricia Nell Warren is author of "The Front Runner" and other bestselling 
books about gay life.  Her publisher is Wildcat Press. 
 For information on her books, her web page can be found at
http://www.gaywired.com/wildcat/wildcat.htm

Copyright (c) 1996 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved. 

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Beverly Hills, CA 90211. 
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