American Sign Language interpreter and photographer Kyle Warnock reinvented his career during last year’s pandemic lockdown to create the website “Queers of Greater Portland,” which documents and connects LGBTQ people in Southern Maine and helps them combat loneliness and isolation in the community.
“Photography is the medium of connection for me,” Warnock told the Bangor Daily News. “It lessens the awkwardness of meeting, and talking to, strangers.”
Along with the beautiful photographs, the site provides resources — from health care to camping, politics to love, business to performing arts — to help link folks together.
Reports BDN:
The photo-based website started out as Warnock’s personal antidote to pandemic-fueled isolation. Nearly two years later, it is a full-blown personal and professional directory for southern Maine’s LGBTQ community, complete with business networking events and group camping trips. …
All the subjects on Queers of Greater Portland are organized into categories including, artists, health care, business, education and politics. The idea is that queers are normal, everywhere and involved in all facets of Maine life. It’s an idea Warnock feels the need to stress, especially outside of Portland.
“I’ve been mocked in public, had bottles thrown at me,” he said. “I’ve been out since I was 12 and I’m well aware of how people get treated.”
By separating his subjects into searchable categories, Warnock tries to introduce strangers to one another and help them find each other within their own safe community, which he said was especially important for “people who are just finding themselves.”
In addition to business and art connections, Queers of Greater Portland also brings members of the local LGBTQ community together to enjoy the outdoors. In the past year, Warnock has led camping trips to Swan Island, Baxter State Park and Mount Blue State Park. There was a sloa foraging workshop in Brunswick.
Warnock sees nature and the outdoors as a healthy alternative to queer folks meeting in bars, where socializing inevitably revolves around alcohol.
Right now, Warnock sees no end to his project. He still has plenty of people ready to be photographed and added to his website and Instagram feed. But he does think he’d like to turn Queers of Greater Portland into a nonprofit someday.
More at QueersofGreaterPortland.org. Read the complete BDN article here.
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