Photographer interviews kids of LGBT parents
By Micah Sulit
Brooklyn-based photographer Gabriela Herman has published an insightful series of photographs and audio interviews with children of LGBT parents. Her subjects, now adults, either grew up with gay parents or with a mom and dad, one of whom later came out as gay.
In the interviews, “The Kids”, as Herman has dubbed them, reflect on their experiences and how they felt about their parents’ sexuality.
“I knew that people had something called a mother that I didn’t necessarily have, but I didn’t really think that I was so much in the minority,” says Hope, who was raised by her two dads in New York.
“I had an inclination that my dad was gay from the very beginning of time,” says Mark, who grew up in Pennsylvania with his mom and dad. His dad came out when he was in college. “I always knew I was queer, which helps. I would see early on in my childhood, my father using the same behaviours to conceal his own femininity that I did, like he would uncross his legs or he would stop talking with his hands.”
Vanessa was raised by her mom and dad in Virginia. Her dad came out when she was 28. “For me and my sister, we were more upset about the feeling of being lied to for a long time than about my dad’s sexuality,” she says.
On her website and in The New York Times, where her photo project was first published, Herman shares her own story: her mom came out as gay when Herman was in high school. It was something her family struggled with.
She recalls the first night she met other people who were raised by gay parents, for this project that’s been running for five years. “Each portrait and interview has become, in an unexpected way, my own therapy session,” Herman says.
“Some aspect of each story resonated with my experience and helped me chip away at my own sense of solitude,” she adds, and on gay parenting, expresses her hope that future generations “will wonder what the fuss was about”.
To view the entire series and connect with Herman, visit her website: thekids.gabrielaherman.com.