When photographer Luke Abby arrived at the main march of Milan Pride last weekend, the first person he met was wearing a corset covered in the messages and scribbles of revellers passing by. “Resist” one person had written; “Fra amore tutti”, or “Love between all” wrote another. The annual event is more important now than ever: it’s the first time the march has been held since the country’s current prime minister Giorgia Meloni was ruled into office in October 2022. The leader of Brothers of Italy, she has expressed outwardly anti-surrogacy and anti-gay parenting views since she entered power. In March of this year, according to PBS, Milan stopped recording parents in same-sex couples on the city registers.
At a time when visibility, defiance and queer positivity is vital, Luke – a British photographer who is based between Berlin and New York – captured those in attendance. Marching through the city from Milan’s Piazza Repubblica to the Arco della Pace, where a night of performances awaited them, the crowd had fun in the heat: “People were getting each other wet with super soakers to cool down,” Luke says. “That was very cute.”
Luke’s photographs are shot entirely in black-and-white, a creative decision that acts as a leveller for the technicolour crowd. It suggests that, in the midst of such fraught socio-political times, the LGBTQ+ community have more in common with the heteronormative majority than those bigots might think. Still, Luke was drawn to the outliers. “I was mostly looking for the punks,” he says. “People with style.”
It’s them who fill the frames of these photos, adopting the spirit of punk as much as they do its aesthetics. If they’re not rocking mohawks and face piercings, they’re wearing thongs or dressed in lace and leopard print; kissing in the street.
A few days earlier, Luke attended trans pride in the city too. “It was amazing to see so many people, including a lot of elderly people, watching and thinking from their balconies,” he says, the Pride march likely bringing a community that existed in these people’s abstract into their real world. “It was happy, special and electric.”
You can buy prints of Luke’s Milan Pride portraits on his website. All proceeds made from the sale will be donated to ALA Milano, SAT Pink, Casa Marcella and GAGA Vicenza.
Credits
Photography Luke Abby