Family is important. They’re the people who lift you up in your best, brightest moments, and they’re the people who are there for you when things aren’t so good as well. You can trust them to tell you where you’ve messed up, what you should do next, or even just exactly why you shouldn’t wear that hat out of the house – because there’s a foundation of love between you, even when you disagree.
Often, however, particularly when you’re LGBTQ+, chosen family – friends, lovers, mentors, elders, allies – is just as crucial as biological family, if not more so: the chosen family members you collect and carry throughout your life affirm you no matter what, even when you might not get that reassurance elsewhere.
It’s for this reason that with Calvin Klein’s new Pride month campaign, “This Is Love”, the brand is celebrating the unique relationships among chosen families in the LGBTQ+ community – and what better way to do it than with a specially-created family photo album? Though you won’t find the questionable hair decisions and bad 90s fashion of your average family picture collection here, you will see candidly intimate moments among the chosen families of a cast of groundbreaking entertainers and advocates, photographed by John Edmonds.
Focused on genuine moments of connection between loved ones who have found and chosen each other, the campaign spans culture, and hosts LGBTQ+ trailblazers from areas including music, film, dance, and activism. Those pictured include the filmmaker and godfather of queer culture John Waters and actress Mink Stole; Sasha Lane and Sergio D’arcy Lane; team members from The Trevor Project, of which Calvin Klein are supporters and sponsors; Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan; House of Xtravaganza, the legendary ballroom house; hairstylist Holli Smith and her fiancé Pony; actors Justice Smith and Nic Ashe; and the Afrofuturistic arts collective TRIBE.
To learn more about the campaign visit our website here.