Photographer Jackie Teeple's #AYearOfPride Project Promotes Positive Representation
The English language idiom “a picture is worth a thousand words” doesn’t quite explain the way photographer Jackie Teeple uses her passion project to tell someone’s story. With one click from her camera, Jackie Teeple helps to erase generalizations and preconceived notions about the incredibly diverse LGBTQ community, show the importance and the necessity of Pride, and help celebrate families and people from all walks of life as they progress in their journey through life.
Jackie Teeple
Jackie Teeple is a talented professional photographer with her own business in Los Angeles, CA called Two-Eight Photography and has over fifteen years of experience as a photographer, with a BA in Professional Photography from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Teeple got into photography when she was 14 years old at the urging of her yearbook editor who didn’t know what to do with her because she was too high-energy for the classroom.
“What she was using as an excuse to get me out of the classroom ended up turning into a life-long passion twenty years later,” said Teeple. “I ended up going to school out here in California at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, which no longer exists, but when it did, it was the top photography school in the country. People used to compare it to West Point, the military school except for photography. It was a lot of work. It was a four-year degree in three years.”
You can find Teeple working as a photographer for various events and music in Los Angeles and the surrounding Orange County areas. However, her biggest ongoing project is the “A Year of Pride” that she began during Pride month in 2017. The project has grown to just over 100 participants so far from eight different countries, and more than twenty states in the U.S.
“It’s the idea of the importance and the necessity of Pride to us as a community, but as told through portraits,” Teeple explained. “So, I’m taking portraits of different members of the LGBTQ community and allies and using that to show how diverse the LGBTQ community is. I think that a lot of people’s preconceived notions about us and about how we look, act, and about who we are, form without realizing there is far more complexity to the human beings they are making their generalizations about.
You hear people saying, oh well we don’t have straight Pride,” Teeple continued. “Or, why do you have to have a big party to show who you are, just live every day, because normal straight people just live every day and we don’t have a big party celebrating that we’re straight. I think it goes so much deeper than just a party, which I think is all non-allies see. They see us going out and having parades and having parties and being loud, exuberant and bright but there’s so much more to it as far as having a community, having people that you can lean on, having people that represent you, and having positive representation in the world, and all of those things are touched on.”
Teeple spoke about how these portraits helped bring positive representation to the community but that the work has also inspired and touched her as well.
“I’ve heard so many stories, I’ve sat and cried with people, and I celebrated whole families,” said Teeple. One of my favorite ones that I had was of an entire family with two moms and their six biological children — two sets of twins and then two non-twins. I usually do the portraits in front of a single flag, but I had to set up three flags just to fit them all into one picture. But getting to celebrate such a beautiful rainbow family was so beautiful, and such a profound moment for me.”
Tracie Thoms
Teeple has photographed Broadway, television, and film actors, Tony winners, and even Victoria Secret Angel Josephine Scriver who, along with her brother Oliver, is what they call rainbow babies or “bothies” meaning that both of their parents are gay. However, it’s not all about snapping images of the famous LGBTQ community members and allies. Teeple’s welcomes everyone who is an ally or a part of the community to join her project.
“What’s important isn’t who I’m working with as much as getting as many people as possible representing as much of the spectrum of our community, said Teeple. “To really showcase what we are and why we are to the people who don’t really understand or the people who don’t really get it, and really to shatter all of these preconceived notions that people have about our community.”
Each subject will stand in front of the pride flag of their choice for their portrait. The session, which is free of charge but accepts donations, results anywhere from one to ten portraits which primarily get posted on Instagram. Teeple’s long-term goal is to have a gallery showing of the “A Year of Pride” project and to make a coffee table book to share the many faces of Pride.
“This is representing more than just me. This is representing more than two-eight photography, which is my business; this is representing an entire culture,” Teeple explained.” This is representing an entire community that needs to be heard and that needs to be seen because there are people out there, like our current administration, who wants nothing more than to silence those voices, so we need to be louder than ever, and we need to represent who we are.”
Jackie Teeple invites LGBTQ community members and allies to drop in or schedule a visit at her studio, Two-Eight Photography. You can contact Teeple or can find out more information about the project and her other work by visiting jackie@two-eightphotography.com. You can also follow the #AYearOfPride project on Instagram at twoeightphotography.