The faces we see in photographer Umberto Nicoletti’s new book of portraits exude joy, hope, humor, beauty, confidence and power. But the text in the book, which explains the stories behind those faces, tells nearly the opposite story.
It details instances of extortion, abandonment, imprisonment, torture, and murder. The people featured in Nicoletti’s portraits, collected in a book titled Asylum, are all members of the LGBTQ+ community who have sought asylum in countries far more accepting of their identities than the ones they’re struggling to escape. At home, their identities have left them subject to punishments that range from public flogging to execution. Sad, desperate and sometimes horrific as their stories may be, Nicoletti has refused to present his subjects as objectified figures of tragedy, instead portraying them as stars and role-models. “I wanted to use beautiful, glossy images to evoke empathy, and to present each of them as a glamorous individual,” he said by Zoom from his studio in Milan. “We’re used to seeing actors or musicians portrayed like that – as heroes. But someone who fights for their rights, that’s a true hero.”
Informing Nicoletti’s presentation of his subjects was his background in fashion, arts and advertising photography. “I’m not used to taking pictures as a reporter,” he said. “It’s a really different feeling. Not that fashion photography isn’t important, but this had a deeper meaning.”
The project was proposed to him by a friend who has long been involved in the issues that surround LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. To find the subjects for his portraits, Nicoletti relied on five organizations dedicated to the cause, located in Milan, London, Toronto, Washington and New York. Nicoletti has always had a special feeling for the displaced, whether they be immigrants, refugees or asylum seekers. (The last category refers to those who are persecuted in their home countries specifically for their politics, religion or sexuality). Nicoletti’s mother was born to Sicilian parents in Tripoli, Libya where she lived until she was a teen, when Muammar Gaddafi began exiling, and seizing the assets, of many citizens of Italian descent, including her family. “I consider myself the son of immigrants, born in a place I don’t belong,” Nicoletti wrote in the book’s introduction.
Despite his identification with his subjects, Nicoletti said he initially wasn’t sure how to present them in the book. He discovered his angle by interviewing them for a potential video component to the project. “They didn’t want to talk about the pain and struggle they’ve faced,” he said. “They only wanted to talk about their hopes and dreams. I thought that was really beautiful, so I decided to express that aspect of them in the photos.”
Initially, few of the subjects wanted to have their faces shown, some out of shame for their situation, others due to the threat they, or their loved ones, are subject to in their home countries “I thought I was going to have a lot of dark images in the book,” Nicoletti said. “But in the end, a lot of them did want to show their faces. So this became a project we did together, not one I did just by myself.”
Though most of the portraits show the subjects’ faces, many feature creative and purposeful use of shadowing. “That’s to show the parts of their past life that we don’t know,” said Nicoletti.
He decided to shoot entirely in black and white “to make the images more iconic. They’re not linked to reality the way color shots would be,” he said.
In strategic places, Nicoletti added splashes of bronze over the images to represent blood. The coffee table scale of the book gives the images grandeur and depth, lending special impact to shots like a series of portraits of a trans woman who exudes the hauteur of a young Marlene Dietrich. Another striking series captures a joyfully flamboyant young man whose presentation would be met with everything from disgust to violence in his home country. When asked which shots stand out most to him, Nicoletti chose two of the sadder images. One features a young African man, his mouth agape in an apparent scream. “I’m compelled by the emotion in the image,” he said. The other picture, which shows someone with their hands covering their face, adorns the cover. “It expresses shame, which is important to the experience,” Nicoletti said.
Between the portraits, the book features snatches of testimony from those who are seeking asylum. Many of them were drawn from the letters those applying for entry need to write to explain why they need protection. The authors of the letters aren’t identified either for legal reasons or to prevent reprisals against those who wrote them. They’re brutal to read. In one testimonial, from Eurasia, a gay man writes of his father’s attempt to kill him for wanting to marry another man. Another man, from Africa, writes about being imprisoned with other gay friends who had their fingernails ripped out before being killed, while an asylum seeker from the Americas recalls nearly being beaten to death by people in his neighborhood.
The book opens with parts of a suicide note from Sarah Hegazi, a well-known lesbian activist from Egypt, who was imprisoned and tortured for three months for flying a rainbow flag at a 2017 concert in Cairo by the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila, whose lead singer is openly gay. Though Hegazi managed to get asylum in Canada, the PTSD she suffered from her experience led her to kill herself in Toronto in 2020. “The journey was cruel, and I am too weak to resist,” she wrote in her final note. “Forgive me.”
Nicoletti said the experience of PTSD is common among those seeking asylum. The process alone can be traumatizing. Often, it’s arduous, confusing and long. Lyosha Gorshkov, of the New York-based organization RusaLGBT, which helped find subjects for the book and which aids queer asylum seekers from the former Soviet Union, said “the system is so backlogged that some people are waiting for interviews for eight or nine years. There is no logic to the system,” he said.
Lack of funding and staffing remain major problems both in the US and Europe, made worse by the fact that refugees are prioritized over asylum seekers. “The whole system needs to change,” Gorshkov said.
In the meantime, queer people continue to suffer profoundly in more countries that some may realize. According to a report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, 43% of the member states recognized by the UN criminalize queer identity. Sixty-one of those states have laws allowing for imprisonment; Six can hand down life sentences. Nine member states have the authority to impose the death penalty for same-sex acts. Nicoletti said even he didn’t know the extent of the fear and brutality until he began the project. Now that he is aware, his mission is to get more people to talk about the issue. To him, the large scale of his book mirrors the scope of the problem. “I wanted to give the immediate impression that this is not a small issue,” he said. “It affects many people all over the world.”
Ultimately, Nicoletti said his goal is for “people to look at the pictures and think, ‘if I was in their position, what would my reaction be?’ I want people to feel what the people in the pictures feel. Not just LGBTQ people,” he said, “all people.”
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Asylum is out on 16 May. Proceeds will go to the 519 Church Street in Toronto, CIG Arcigay in Milan, he DC Center in Washington, Rainbow Migration in London and RusaLGBT in New York