Congratulations to Shane Thomas McMillan, winner of PCL’s Facebook competition ‘Hidden’!
Shane Thomas McMillan is a Berlin-based documentary filmmaker, writer, photographer, and educator from western Montana. From 2005 to 2010 he studied journalism, German and international development at the University of Montana. In 2007, he studied abroad at the University of Ghana, traveling and documenting the region extensively.
Shane now works as a freelance photojournalist and as creative lead on projects based around the topics of human rights, refugees, and cultural identity. From 2014 to 2015 Shane taught documentary photography and filmmaking at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, Indian Country Today, Slate, and PRI’s The World.
Below is the winning image, from Shane’s photography project, Queer Kampala:
Ugandan human rights activist Simon plans to stay in the country for as long as he can. “I have decided to fight from within,” he says. Despite the atmosphere for queers, he says his countrymen are a good people. “I am proud to be Ugandan, my roots are here.”
There are two ways to get by as queer in Uganda: live “loud and proud” or “in the closet”.
This series of images was created to offer a peek into the lives of that second group, people for whom being open with their sexual identity is not an option.
Just months before these photographs were made, the now-defunct Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 had been pushed through the African nation’s parliament by the administration of 30-year president Yoweri Museveni. Many local and international observers still believe the bill was simply a convenient distraction from several brewing political scandals; a half-hearted attempt to divert the stresses of ineffective development paired with rapid globalisation towards something other than the government. The act brought international headlines, plenty of scorn from the West, and even sanctions on some aid moneys.
Lost in the debate: the faces and voices of Uganda’s vibrant queer community. With help from local, national, and international human rights organizations this series was created to capture the stress and fear of living underground as a queer Ugandan. It was created in a sort of safe house in the outskirts of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The house is managed by a human rights activist named Simon who is portrayed twice in this series draped in a Ugandan flag and peering over his desk into the camera. Summing up the situations of those he helped he said, “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
Along with his winning image, Shane also entered a couple more photos from this series, which can be seen below:
“If we all rush away, the spirit will die,” says Daniel looking out of the barred windows of the safe house. After being outed in a local paper the 32-year-old says he lost his job, his partner had to flee the country, and he had to go underground. Though he would rather stay in Uganda, Daniel says he is planning to leave the country as soon as he can. “It is not safe for me here anymore,” he says. Though the law has been nullified by the Ugandan Supreme Court, human rights activists say little will change, and that the law will very likely return.
A simple lunch is served at the safe house each day, but putting food on the table is no easy task: funding has been hard for the small organization. Big outside funders don’t yet trust fledgling underground organization enough to support it and local support is out of the question. For now, those staying in the home pay the bills with small jobs beyond the walls of the facility; something that could put them in danger of retribution from outsiders.
Check out more of Shane’s work here: https://www.dokumentarian.com
Shane has won 2 x 20×16 prints from MetroPrint and a portfolio review.
Many thanks to Metro Print for sponsoring our competition: https://www.metro-print.co.uk/home
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