Brianna Roye is a Toronto photographer and creator of Out of Many, One People, a photo project that centres 2SLGBTQ+ people of Caribbean descent. With each portrait in the series, Brianna reminds us that Caribbean people are diverse not only in race and culture but also in sexual orientation and gender identity. Her work captures queer love and joy in the ordinary and is a necessary contrast to the dominant narratives of oppression and survival that are often used to represent the experiences of 2SLGBTQ+ communities.

I sat down with Brianna to discuss how she is using this photo series to produce more diverse representations of queer people from the Caribbean. See below for some excerpts from our conversation.

Andre Harriott: What did queer representation look like when you were growing up?

Brianna Roye: I didn't really see it. If I saw it, it was just white people. I remember I used to watch Showcase here and there. There were a couple of queer shows, but it was just all very white. And I remember feeling very connected to those shows but still feeling disconnected at the same time. I felt very confused. Like, here's this thing that's so interesting, but it doesn't feel right. And, I think at the time, I confused it with being wrong. I also kind of, unfortunately, pushed that side of me down––I repressed it. I still think I was very much in denial, even though I knew I was queer at that age. I felt this way because I didn't see any queer representation that looked like me. And if they looked like me, they still weren't looking like me. If they were Black, they weren't masculine; they were very femme, and they were Black American. It wasn't anything like I knew at home.

AH: Do you think queer representation has improved since you were a child?

BR: I see kids growing up with so much more representation now, and I'm like, wow, you guys are so lucky. You don't know how easy it is for you. But there's still so much work to be done. And I think that's kind of where I started wanting to do this work because we're moving forward in society, and we're becoming a little bit more progressive, apparently. But in terms of queer Blackness, there’s still so much work to be done. Instead of waiting around and complaining about it, I think I want to be the change I want to see. So I started creating this living, breathing archival documentation of queer Black Caribbean people from all the islands and showing how diverse we are and that we exist and we've existed forever.

*Brianna Roye, Out of Many, One People, 2018*

AH: What was your experience being queer in a Caribbean household?

BR: I'm very grateful for my mom because even if she didn't really understand and still doesn't understand fully. She was very receptive, and she was the one who asked me when I first came out. I never came out to her. She came up to me, and she was like, “So what's going on?” And I was like, “I don't know what you’re talking about.” And she was like, “Come on. You know what I mean.” She kind of put me on the spot. And at the time, I was just like, why would you put me on the spot? But I'm really grateful for it because we had a good conversation. She didn't understand because, at the time, I came out as bi, and she was like, “What is that?” In her head, it was either you're gay or straight. She didn’t understand that sexuality, for a lot of people, could be a spectrum. And I was trying to explain that to her at 16 years old, and she was just not getting it, but she was like, “I love you regardless.” I'm very grateful for that experience, and I know that's not the experience that most people have. I understand that I had that privilege of being in a home that was accepting.

AH: Who else supported you to become confident with your sexuality?

BR: Honestly, I didn't really have a lot. I didn't have any support growing up. It was just my mom being like, “I love you. I'll support you.” At school, it was still very taboo. I remember my first girlfriend in high school. Everyone would kind of whisper rumours and weird, homophobic comments. I didn't really have that support. And then I just got to a point––I think in like grade 12, I was just like, “Screw all of you. I’m going to live my life for me.” I was tired of feeling like I was a shell of myself, and I just wanted to be me. I think when people saw just how confident and okay I was with myself, they kind of became more receptive to it. My friends, you know, they didn't understand it either, but they were supportive, and now they're so supportive. Like, I have a great support system now, and I'm very thankful and grateful for that.

AH: What inspired you to begin photographing queer Black people from the Caribbean?

BR: The project kind of started off as an accident. Initially, I had started it because my friend asked me to be in an exhibition he was doing for Pride a couple of years ago, and I wanted to capture Black queer people. I realized most of the Black people I captured were of Caribbean descent. After the exhibition, I was like, huh, I don't think I've really seen this done before in the manner that I was doing it. Usually, most of the projects that are similar are focused on trans women or gay men or Caribbean lesbian women. But that's even a smaller percentage, so the breadth of it is usually focused on gay men. And I said, “No, I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on all of us.” There are so many of us, right? I also wanted to use the title Out of Many, One People because, as you know, Jamaican people love to say “out of many, one people” to refer to the diversity of races and cultures that are in Jamaica. And it's like, cool, you guys are so receptive of Chinese Jamaicans, white Jamaicans, and such, but yet you are not receptive to your own people who are queer. That didn't make sense to me as a child. My mom would always repeat that mantra, “out of many, one people.” My family, too. As a child, I kind of hated hearing it, but I didn't have the language to say why. So I wanted to use “out of many, one people” to include queer people because, if we're so diverse, we should include the diversity of sexuality and gender expression as well.

AH: Who inspires your work?

BR: I follow a lot of amazing photographers locally and internationally that inspire me a lot. There’s specifically one photographer; I think he may be based in New York or LA. His name is Clifford Prince King Jr., and his work is in a similar vein, but he focuses on queer intimacy with men and specifically Black men. The stuff that he captures really touches me in a way where I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I want to do with my work––just obviously a slightly different subject matter. Seeing work like his and other contemporaries’, just capturing intimacy and what it looks like from our perspective, is really what inspires me and drives me.

AH: What is next for you?

BR: I'm trying to focus on restarting this project for the summer and building out enough photos that I can compile into a book. I want to do something to fund that, even if it’s out of my own pocket, because I don't want it to be just a book. I want it to be impactful. I want to bring it to other countries and make sure that everyone who was photographed has a copy of it as well. I also want to focus on documenting queer elders from the Caribbean. At the moment, I've been mostly documenting my peers, people my age, maybe a little bit older and some younger, but I really want to tap into the seniors. There are 67-year-old queer Caribbean people out there who have had to live through times that were much rougher than now. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with the project and representation. I'm not trying to do something for representation’s sake anymore. There are so many people who can be impacted in a positive way and at least get to see themselves through my work.

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