Photographing the Truth Behind "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

by Cristian Asher 

 

 

What’s the cure for "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?" It’s the same as the cure for every other form of homophobia: coming out. As gay military men and women are seen by more and more people as, well, people rather than an abstraction, the truth that this policy is unjust becomes obvious to everyone. It becomes irrefutable.
On the other hand, what is the exact goal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?" To keep these men and women from coming out. To relegate them to the shadows. To condemn them to being unprovable statistics rather than human beings with hearts, lives, loved ones. The disease works first and foremost to preclude its own cure.

But there’s hope. Photographer Jeff Sheng, featured in the New York Times this week, has found a moving, inspired solution to this problem. Sheng’s "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" project features portraits of active gay military personnel with their faces hidden. Some are in shadow, some turn away from the camera, a few are artfully cropped. The effect is both intensely human and achingly sad. These are individuals who are proud to offer their lives for their country, and yet who are prevented from showing that pride.

Sheng’s first volume of this series featured 17 service members, some of whom had emailed him in response to his previous project, Fearless, which featured out gay athletes. He worried, he says, "about putting people at risk. I didn't want that on my shoulders at all."

He also wasn't sure how motivated his subjects, who have so much to lose, would be when the time came to shoot the picture. But in the end, he says, "I was just incredibly moved by the emails I got." One of his first subjects contacted him from overseas, and Sheng doubted whether they'd ever meet in person. But then came a follow up email: "I'm going to be back in the U.S. Can you still come and photograph me?"

Sheng crisscrossed the country, meeting his subjects at their homes when possible, or else in hotel rooms convenient to where they were stationed. "You're the third person who knows I'm gay," one man told him after they'd completed the photographs. "There's me, and the person who drove me to the shoot, and now you." With gay and lesbian military members willing to take that kind of leap of faith to help this cause, Sheng believes his own form of "subversive activism," getting these subtle, lovely pictures out into the world where everyone will see them, is a responsibility he can't ignore.

The courage of Jeff Sheng’s subjects is remarkable, and so is his own accomplishment on both artistic and political grounds. This is a chink in the wall of discrimination which still surrounds our gay and lesbian military members, and it's a good reason to believe that the days of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" are numbered.

But don't pop open the champagne just yet. Recently, one of Sheng's former subjects forwarded him an email saying, "This does not look good." Attached was a document from the military saying that even though DADT is being investigated, it is still in force for the moment. Nothing, so far, has changed.