Speaking at Columbia University on 24 September 2007, Iran's then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed: "In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in your country."
 
While most Western nations now officially accept homosexuality, and some same-sex marriage, homosexuality remains punishable by death in Iran. Gay people are not allowed to live out their sexuality there. Their only options are to undergo gender transition, tolerated by law but treated as pathological, or to flee.
 
In Denizli, a city in Turkey, hundreds of gay Iranians are caught in transit, their lives on hold, hoping one day to be welcomed by a host country where they can start again and come out. Set in this limbo, where anonymity offers the best protection, my photographs explore sensitive questions of identity and gender, seeking to restore to each of these men the face their country has stolen.
 
My aim is not to portray them as victims of political oppression and painful memories, but to focus on their present situation and their hopes for a better, freer life in which they can express their love and sexuality openly, beyond restrictive dictates of sexuality and gender. The photographs paradoxically juxtapose light, simple, sometimes even festive elements with the gravity of the subject and the precariousness of their subjects' circumstances. Alternating covered and uncovered faces, the series points to the difficulties these men face in reclaiming the space for identity they have been denied.
 
Laurence Rasti, Carouge, 2016.