ALL LOVE IS EQUAL

• Prize
  Gold in Advertising/Travel/Tourism
• Photographer
  Braden Summers

Beauty has been used for centuries to help sell lifestyles and to help sell clothes. my imagery intended to use this methodology to help sell the idea that gay love is just as romantic as straight love. We constantly view models illustrating romance for advertising for wedding and luxury tourism; these images have ultimately set the bar for what romance looks like. By excluding gay couples in this context, we are ultimately told as an LGBt community that our love and romance is not as beautiful because we don’t have this same representation, the fantasy. the stunning models that are illustrating straight romance in this context are not questioned if they are authentic, but we buy into the fantasy - literally and guratively. the images that have notoriously been related to our community are largely sex-based or banal images of love that are shown in the form of journalistic photography, documenting our progress as a community. Where is the beauty? Where is the fantasy for our community? my work is a commentary that beautiful same-sex photographs should be included into our mainstream advertisements and fashion magazines. As a community at large some- times we need help dreaming, especially when so many view our love as something that is sinful and disgusting. there is a fantasy of what beauty is that is perpetuated by the likes of many photographers and largely with images alluding to heterosexual companions. my work strives to be the antidote, not simply providing a fantasy for the LGBt community, but mostly providing a relatable vision of gay romance by using the same tools that sell straight romance.