The photos of Prince de Vos at the annual Pride Photo festival have been daubed in public spaces. In particular, the photo of a half-naked trans man Levi Jacobs with his, as Jacobs calls it, “new dick”. Both Jacobs and De Vos have also received threats.
Last Friday the Pride Photo festival opened in Maastricht. There, vandals defaced and smeared photos on opening night. In addition, five young people broke into the local COC that evening.
On the IJ-promenade in Amsterdam, where the festival started in April, the photos were covered with stickers. Although everything remained quiet on the Jaarbeursplein in Utrecht, it happened again in May at the next stop, the Peperdijk in the center of Vlissingen. A large red cross was smeared on the photo of the half-naked Jacobs. In June, at the next stop in Almere, the panels with the work of De Vos were unscrewed and turned over. The exhibition there closed a week ahead of schedule, in order to restore the damaged works.
“Last year there was nothing in the air,” says Gijs Stork, spokesperson for the festival. “But this year everything is different.” According to Stork, the Pride Photo organization has reported vandalism in Vlissingen, Almere and Maastricht. “But what happens to that? We fear nothing at all.”
New prudishness
For the photographer and his portrayed person, the state of affairs is “sad, disappointing and angry”. De Vos: „My photos are not about sex at all. They are not pornographic or offensive. They are about vulnerability, transience, the passage of time. The fact that Levi is trans was not the reason for following him with my camera. I thought he was a beautiful and vulnerable person. When I met him, Levi was living in a squat, being evicted, and staying in a caravan. Everything was in turmoil, not just his body but his whole life. And slowly – so I saw – he grew into his new body. He became a kind of Greek god. I wanted to record that process. This is important. Not if he is half naked in some of the photos.”
Jacobs: „I am shocked by the new prudishness in the Netherlands and the reactions that our work evokes. I am being threatened online. Since May, social media has been calling for the destruction of the works. I can handle those kinds of comments for half an hour. Then I’m broken. So I’m hardly online anymore.”
Since the exhibition in Almere, De Vos has also been threatened by telephone. “Men call me anonymously and say they want to talk to me. But that’s not the case at all. They just want to tell their story, to spit me out. There is absolutely no interest from the hate mongers and the vandals to take a serious look at my series, which I’ve been working on for seven years. My work has been reduced to porn in an instant by them.”
Boys do cry
Prins de Vos (1991) meets poet, artist and trans man Levi Jacobs (1993) in 2014. He sees photos on Facebook of a young, shy man of twenty. Jacobs has been receiving female hormone inhibitors from the age of fifteen and testosterone injections from the age of sixteen. Those stop his periods and breast growth. But the process is slow. On those first pictures of what will grow into the series Boys Do Cry, you see an insecure Jacobs. No breasts, no beard growth yet, but puppy fat. He looks shyly into the camera.
In front of Boys Do Cry De Vos Jacobs followed for seven years. The series shows how he changes: shy, slightly less shy, and ultimately very definitely moving in the queer scene of Amsterdam. His last, “very painful” operation will be over at the end of the series, Jacobs says. He has tattooed the words ‘Boys Do Cry’ just above his pubic area. Because that’s how it is. As a man you do cry.
De Vos’ photo series was selected for the annual Pride Photo festival. This festival, held in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam for the first time in 2020, moved to the street, the public space, in 2021. Instead of one exhibition spot, there were places in all provinces where the photos travel. This gives the LGBTI community a broad voice. Emancipation and beauty go hand in hand.
Bucket and a scouring pad
Pride Photo is deliberately set in public spaces, in places frequented by many people. And De Vos likes that. “For example, people who cannot visit a museum or can purchase an expensive photo book can see the photos for free. This is a wonderful opportunity for emancipation – I am still convinced of that. And if people want to throw red paint, then they will.”
Gijs Stork is determined: “Fortunately, municipalities continue to support us. Also in Maastricht. The alderman there helped to clean the panels with a bucket and a scouring sponge. No, we are certainly not withdrawing.”
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