Rio de Janeiro-based photographer and visual artist Igor Furtado sets out to capture and celebrate the beauty of Brazil’s LGBTQ+ community, whose members continue to face major discrimination across the country. In 2017, he took that mission a step further with the founding of Identidades Marginais (Marginal Identities), a digital platform that spotlights creatives from marginalized backgrounds. We were blown away by his playful and political series of staged yearbook photos, in which LGBTQ+ “students” sat in front of bright backdrops, wearing the type of wild outfits, bold hairstyles and expressive make-up that wouldn’t normally be acceptable dress—a statement against the limits placed on self-expression in the country’s conservative schools.
Stories with Igor Furtado