The emotional story of being a victim of a homophobic hate crime

In current media, violence is one of the biggest and most prominent topics. It’s always present, sometimes visually through images and videos or through language and tone. When crime cases get portrayed, there’s strict narrative boundaries that are used for certain types of crime: Whilst corporate crime is getting analysed through a very technical eye, murder for example gets its own very brutal and realist narrative - as mainstream movies show. When talking about hate crime, this kind of realist narrative doesn't seem to apply, even though these crimes often end up in physical assault. With this project, inspired by the 2019 attack on two lesbian women on a London bus, I wanted to tell the story of being a hate-crime victim through the lens of emotion. This series of photos narrates different stages of the attack.

When approaching this project, one of the most important aspects for me was to make sure that the visual language conveyed the story I wanted to tell in the most direct but also interesting way possible. When we see videos or images of real hate crime, it often is CCTV footage or similar - missing out on many important details. In many cases, this makes it difficult for to create a strong sense of sympathy for the victims.

Contact for more information and inquiries.