The Two Gay Geeks are honored and pleased to publish this press release for a book that is important to the LGBTQ Community as well as our supporters. LGBTQ of Steel is a groundbreaking look at the LGBTQ community. Thank you to Mona Elyafi of ILDK Media for connecting us to Jan.
Please have a look and visit Jan’s website for more information and purchase one of her books.
Let us know what you think in the comments section below. As always we welcome your feedback on all of our content.
LGBTQ of Steel
In LGBTQ of Steel, Jan Dee Gordon celebrates a group of LGBTQ individuals who bravely and without hesitation overcame unimaginable obstacles that threatened to hold them back, block their path, and completely destroy their lives. These powerful individuals have bared their souls, all of them formidable; bending and molding a seemingly unmovable ribbon of steel to exemplify their individual struggles and hardships and ultimate triumphs.
Their stories relate no easy struggle to live in accordance with their gender identity and sexual orientation—essential elements of personal liberty, dignity, and autonomy. In their own words, they describe transforming a seemingly unyielding reality (represented by the ribbons of steel in the photos) into lives of service, art, friendship, and humor.
Some of the celebrities featured include: Alec Mapa, Margaret Cho, Frank De Caro, John Duran and 93 year-old Bob Clement who was at Stonewall- at the first Pride Parade, and who opened his church to all the LGBT people there…as a first.
“Just as these courageous LGBTQ people bend and shape steel in these photos, they tell in their own words of bending the realities of their lives to become the individuals they were meant to be,” comments Gordon.
Where there was hate and rejection, they chose love. Where there was fear, they chose courage. When they faced falsehoods, they chose truth. When threatened, they chose a quiet resistance. And when isolated, they built community.
To purchase a copy visit: https://www.humanityofsteel.com/lgbtq-of-steel.html
Or purchase through Amazon:
Dedication
LGBTQ of Steel is dedicated to Jan’s brother, Ben Lewis, who lived at a time when medicine wasn’t as advanced as it is today. At age 48 in 1994, he died of complications of Aids. As president of a bank and as a married man with a daughter, he led a double life until he became ill. He really did not have a chance to live a fully open life and to be authentically true to himself.
In his memory, Jan Dee Gordon share these inspirational stories of people in his community who were able to finally and joyfully live openly and as they wish – including his daughter, Soozin Lewis and her partner, Brigit Biagiotti (who are both in the book). Accordingly, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Aids research.
About Jan Dee Gordon’s Other Projects
LGBTQ of Steel is the second book in the “Of Steel” series Jan Dee Gordon has released. The recurring theme in both Women of Steel and LGBTQ of Steel, is how people use their inner strength to overcome life obstacles – analogized to the toughness of steel – and successfully bend the steel into their chosen paths. The subjects of the books are an inspiration of how to face issues and emerge the victor.
About Jan Dee Gordon
For many years, Jan Gordon has been casting her passionate photographer eye over the world, capturing shapes, lights, moments, people, urban settings, natural environments and more—mixing them, opposing them, reinterpreting them in a new, unique, artistic image born from her imagination.
From these contrasts, Jan brings up an aesthetic emotion, sharing her personal vision of our world’s ambiguity with elegant style, tender sensuality, empathic humor.
Whether she creates abstract images by distorting lines, painting a body, mixing textures and materials in real situations . . . or she creates frescos enhancing the spirit of a country, a city, a family, Jan is always exploring new ways of bringing up beauty, emotion, understanding.
Through the years her different projects have included carrying a mannequin head around Paris and photographing in different situations, painting a model’s body with acrylic paint and combining her form with steel and wood, making collages from real photos and mannequins and bodies and photographing the collage. These have led to more recent projects combining living elements such as flowers and branches with steel, then onto the present combination of nudes and steel.
Her study of photography began in Paris in French , continued in New York at the International Center for Photography and Los Angeles at UCLA.
Jan’s pictures have appeared in magazines such as Vogue and Bazaar, and in several museums and galleries such as Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, LA Photo, and Wall Street Gallery. They have been selected by designers to decorate buildings, lobbies, hallways, apartments. They have been sold in stores throughout the USA. They are owned internationally in private collections, among them over a hundred and fifty families with portraits, collages, and books.
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