‘Kiki’ the movie is about the lives of young LGBTQ people of colour who participate in the spectacular Kiki balls that give the performers a safe and empowered space to enact various modes of gender expression.

The Kiki scene was created within the LGBTQ youth-of- color community as a peer-led group offering alternative family systems. The scene has evolved into an organization with governing rules, leaders and teams, numbering hundreds of members in New York and across the U.S and Canada. Run by LGBTQ youth for LGBTQ youth, it draws strategies from the Civil Rights, Gay Rights and Black Power movements.

I photographed some of the spectacular performers at the NYC premiere of the movie in Harlem