(no subject)
The past two very busy weeks have been brilliant, so brace yourself for a long and detailed debriefing. Since my last message, the massive flamboyance of the gay pride week has moved on, but not without me taking over 800 pictures in three days. The weeklong festivities had more of a focus on solidarity and support than the normal carnival atmosphere it has and, in spite of the mayor of Amsterdam calling to scale down many of the events because of concerns about gay bashing (which has been increasing the past few years) and a massive soccer tournament raising further concern for violence, this year’s canal parade was the biggest ever. There were 78 official boats in the parade with nearly a hundred unofficial boats with people in drag and rainbow flags, and there were nearly 400,000 spectators along the Prinsengracht canal to see it. The canal curves around some of the city’s most famous and meaningful sites, including the Homomonument behind the Westerkerk (the oldest church in Amsterdam where Rembrandt is rumoured to be buried) and the Anne Frank Huis. The majority of the spectators looked to be straight couples and families, much like the Roze Zaterdag parade earlier this summer.
Before the parade or any events began, I had the opportunity to interview Maria Lust, the spokesperson for Roze in Blauw. She and her twin sister Ellie are both police officers and both participate in the Roze in Blauw force. Maria kindly let me sit down with her for about an hour for an interview about the history of the group and its role in Amsterdam, and afterward she invited me to join her and her fellow officers on Thursday afternoon when they would be preparing packages of safety information and gay pride-related goodies (rainbow lanyards and pink and blue cell phone stickers), as well as tagging along with my camera as they went to all the gay clubs and bars throughout the city to distribute them. At about 6 I parted ways with them to go to a GreyPride event on Oudzijds Voorburgwal (the original border of the city, on another canal) where about a hundred men and women over 50 had gathered to have a drink together and be entertained by a couple of “aging starlets” in drag. After watching the Candian sensation Michelle DuBarry (read: a 70 year old Canadian man dressed up like Hollywood Barbie lipsynching terribly to Liza Minelli), I biked over to the Westerkerk where the “official” opening of the Gay Pride 2007 was to be held and stayed for several hours awaiting any official announcement, but all it turned out to be was a dance party in the square behind the church. The Roze in Blauw officers showed up again and I hung around with them again for a while before biking home at around 11.
The next day, there weren’t many official events scheduled but there were lots of large street parties down many of the allies throughout the city. All I had to do was wait until dusk when the light was nicest and then head out. All of the DJs played far better music than I have ever heard in clubs I’ve been to here so it was fun to just wander from one thumping sound system to the next. I was still really exhausted from the day before so I didn’t make it a very late night in preparation for the canal parade on Saturday. Even though we (Elger and I) got to the end point for the parade two hours early (despite having to go back to my apartment after half an hour of travel to retrieve the camera battery - very clever of me), there were already at least two rows of people crowding against the edges of the water. I had to negotiate with several nationalities in several areas to make my way to the front of the crowd, including a surly British woman and a sour elderly American couple before a soft spoken Dutch Antillean women offered me her spot before leaving with her girlfriend. The parade was incredible and fully deserving of reputation it has built up, and felt like shooting fish in a barrel photographically. The telephoto lens and I were very pleased with ourselves :)
After all that I had three days before finally meeting Thierry and his boyfriend Rean in Den Haag, so I went back to Groningen for a few days to celebrate Elger’s birthday with him and all our friends in the city. Transporting folding chairs across half a city on bikes in no fun, but since Elger only has a couch we had to borrow some additional seating from one of his friends. I was responsible for giving name tags to everyone despite everyone already knowing each other, as well as hanging up balloons and lighting candles, during both of which I managed minor injuries to myself. It was a fun night of painting model planes (geeky) and disturbing the landlord through boisterous, theatrical conversations.
On Friday I was back in the Randstad to meet Thierry (Alain's brother) and Rean, both of whom work in art galleries and both of whom have sons, from respectively unique circumstances. Thierry was married to his wife Jolanda for ten years before he took very ill and was bed ridden for an undiagnosable illness. After two years of debilitation and job loss as a result, Thierry came to the painful realisation that much of his illness was mentally inflicted due his denial that he was actually gay. Jolanda wanted him to be well of course so they divorced and have stayed amazingly close, and they have a ten year old son whom they share custody over. The afternoon that I met Thierry was coincidentally the last day that his son, Sylvain, would be staying with him, and Jolanda came over that evening to have dinner with them before taking him home.
Rean’s son is only three months old, and is being raised by two lesbian women who live nearby. Rean was the surrogate father for the couple and one of the women carried his child, whom he now sees as often as he likes. On Tuesday or Thursday of next week I will be going with Rean to spend an afternoon with his son after spending a few hours at work with him (at Panorama Mesdag, the oldest panoramic painting in the world in its original location) and interviewing him and Thierry. Yesterday, the day after I met them, Rean invited me to join him at a gay beach volleyball tournament he was participating in at Hoek van Holland Strand, which is two hours from my apartment in Amsterdam. After arriving at the train station, I walked a kilometre to the beach and then no less than an hour up the beach itself to the area where the tournament was being held. Very luckily I arrived in the last five minutes of Rean’s team’s final match of the day and took a couple of shots of him serving before it ended. I stuck around for a little while longer but since it was really hot and sunny (which is a big change from most of the summer, since it’s been in the 50s and not unreasonable to wear a scarf throughout July) I left pretty soon thereafter, trying as hard as I could to seem unaffected as I walked through a nudist section of the beach. Yes, the stereotypes are true: it is predominantly old, fat (straight) couples who choose to indulge in nude sunbathing. The juxtaposition of the fully clothed volleyball tournament and the naked couples was more than a little amusing to me.
Well, this is entirely too long and bravo to anyone who made it this far. This may be my last post before coming home on the 24th, but that may enough time for you to finish reading it.