Su Cassiano

People, as complex, multi-faceted individuals, should not have to choose between their religion, cultural background and sexual orientation or gender.

‘Identities are multiple and coexist within a single person, a single body.’

This project is mapping the multiplicity of possibilities that many patriarchal cultures try to deny, using portraiture, landscape, interviews and research from specialists in the field.

Each portrait is a photograph of someone who is queer (either by their sexual orientation or by their gender, or both.), and who were raised in a religious cultural environment, some of whom embraced it, some of whom rejected it.

Through these multiple layers, Love Harder is a quest for acceptance against uniformity imposed by their culture. By carving spaces for intersectionality not only to exist, but also to flourish.

I met Dal in 2018 in Paris, where he lives. At the time, considering his multiplicity of identites - being trans, Algerian, Kabyle and Muslim - he told me that if someone asked him to mix water with oil, he could do it.

In the Parisian summer of 2022, Dal is sunbathing on his balcony. He wears the qamis, a traditionnal outfit for men found accross the Middle East. His father brought it back for him from his pilgrimage to Mecca. Dal was particularly pleased with this gift, a man's qamis, which symbolises his father's acceptance and love for his trans son.

When my father brought me this gift back from his pilgrimage, I understood the power of faith. Faith is love of oneself and of others.' Paris, 2022

Kerem and Mecnun met 2 years ago and as same sex union is not recognized in Türkiye, they got married with their friends. Mecnun grew up in Mardin, a conservative town in the South East of Anatolia. He hasn’t come out to his family because they are very homophobic. They told him they would kill him if he was gay.

Kerem got kicked out by his father after he came out at a young age and had to interrupt his studies to support himself. His father still refuses to talk to him, but his mother, a deeply religious woman, supports him to be himself. She became a feminist and an activist for LGBTQIA+ rights.

Kerem and Mecnun live together in a conservative district of Istanbul and their landlord, who lives above their apartment, thinks they are just housemates.

Istanbul, 2023

Elif is a young woman from Sanliurfa, a conservative and religious town in the South East of Anatolia. She works for a feminist NGO. She started to get involved for muslim women to have access to better spaces in the mosques.

Recently a constitution change that guarantees women’s right to wear the hijab was proposed in Türkiye.

'Within the same article that proposes the women’s right to wear the hijab, they defined the family in a very heterosexual way. They’re paving the way for more discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people. What does this have to do with my hijab? It’s only a political thing.

It makes it very complicated for people like me because you have to choose sides if you want to exist in this narrative. I refuse to do that.

Both can be a part of anyone’s identity, not just mine. You may want to wear the hijab someday in your life, it should be your right as a queer person. Or I may want to take it off. I may want to change my gender expression or define my sexual orientation differently. This is a very made up rhetoric discourse that you have to chose only one thing. It also makes the queer community take a position against me, against people who wear the hijab. So that’s a very big problem.

It’s very easy to assume things and put labels on me because I’m visible.’ Elif, Istanbul, 2023

The progressive Imam Ludovic Mohammed Zahed, who is married to a man and opened the first inclusive mosque in Paris, had his conference in Türkiye canceled due to death threats.

‘ We all had a period of distance where it’s very difficult to combine queerness and religion in a society that is becoming more and more essentialist and where identities are performatives. This dichotomy is redondant in people’s personal stories, where they have to choose between gender, sexuality and religion.

It’s a dogmatic, social and patriarcal pressure that exists outside of Islam. There’s nothing about the queer question in the Koran. It says that different identities were represented, and that feminine men should be respected.’ Ludovic Mohammed Zahed.

In his country of origin ( Algeria), ‘promotion of homosexuality’ can lead to prison.

Mariah, Malta, 2023

Mert having tea in a traditional tea house in Karaköy, Istanbul, area where he feels safe as a gay man. He just graduated as a doctor and dreams of emigrating to the U.K. to be free to get married with his boyfriend who is already there. Istanbul, 2023