I refused to let them intimidate me : the untold stories of LGBT+ seniors Nadja Sayej
When Pearl Bennett, now 69, came out as a transgender woman at a family dinner when she was 50, she wasn’t warmly embraced.
Bennett’s mother leaned in and asked: “What is all this?”
“I saw that look in my mother’s eyes, she was a little drunk,” recalls Bennett.
“I felt ostracized by my family.”
This heartbreaking anecdote and many more are part of Not Another Second, an exhibition in New York City which tells the stories of a dozen LGBT+ senior citizens who tell their own coming out stories. Each photographic portrait and video interview is marked with a number, like “16 years”, representing the time they lost to staying in the closet, based on societal expectations of the past.