“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said in a December 1963 speech. And by the “maladjusted,” he clarified that he meant those who would refuse to accept segregation, discrimination, religious bigotry, or other forms of social injustice – men and women who would fight for freedom, truth, and equality.
As the director of multicultural and community development at Middlesex, history teacher Pascale Musto opened the School’s annual commemoration of Dr. King’s life and work by referencing this particular quotation, a fitting choice for the afternoon’s guest speaker, photographer Jeff Sheng. In the spirit of Dr. King and other civil rights activists, Mr. Sheng has, through his compelling work, advocated for the rights of a segment of society that has traditionally been suppressed: the LGBT community, individuals who identify themselves as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Known for his photo series entitled Fearless – portraits of “out” LGBT athletes in high schools and colleges – Mr. Sheng is a Harvard graduate whose work has been published in The New York Times, TIME magazine, and Newsweek, and has been featured by media outlets such as CNN, ABC World News, CBS News, and NPR. He previously taught photography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a visiting professor at Harvard in 2011. Currently, he is an interdisciplinary graduate fellow at Stanford, where he is finishing his Ph.D. in sociology and continuing his photographic projects. Mr. Sheng brought a selection of Fearless images to exhibit in the School’s Wood Gallery, giving the community a chance to appreciate his work firsthand.
“I talk about LGBT rights now, but I was closeted in high school,” Mr. Sheng told his Middlesex audience. At that time, he thought it was “inconceivable to be an athlete and ‘out’ back then,” and he noticed that people made fun of those who did come out. Deciding to step away from athletics in his senior year, he picked up photography instead and subsequently pursued a major in visual and environmental studies at Harvard, where he gradually connected with the LGBT community there.
Fearless, he said, was partly inspired his first boyfriend, a closeted water polo player who – years after they broke up – came out in a national magazine. In 2003, Mr. Sheng began searching for LGBT college athletes who were out and willing to be photographed; eventually, his project expanded to include high school students. Today, Fearless includes portraits of more than 200 athletes representing a variety of sports, genders, races, and ethnicities. It has been exhibited more than 60 times and has also been published as a book, printed with eight different cover portraits.
“I wanted people to see the exhibit and think about them as athletes,” Mr. Sheng said. “What does the LGBT community look like? Maybe it is different from what you thought.”
While continuing to add to Fearless, Mr. Sheng has created other powerful projects, such as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a collection of portraits of closeted LGBT military personnel who were prevented from being “out” by the U.S. policy of the same name. As he endeavored to protect the individuals he was photographing, Mr. Sheng realized, “Removing their faces, and denying the viewer the ability to see their faces, was doing the same thing as the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. It was denying them their identity.”
The work of challenging assumptions and striving for equality has clearly been rewarding and worthwhile – and it has required tremendous courage, which is how the title Fearless originated. “All of you can reach out and find something that is meaningful to you,” Mr. Sheng said, “and through it, you can change the world. What is the greatest thing you can accomplish, and what do you fear about failing?”
On a day created in honor of an individual who fought valiantly for social justice, Jeff Sheng set an inspirational example for others to emulate.