Hello everyone. I’d like firstly to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional custodians of this land, and I pay my respects to the Elders, both past and present.
I pleased to be with you to open the Our Families Photoboth, C.Moore Hardy’s latest project, Our Family, which she is undertaking with the support of ACON and the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby.
C.Moore has been photographing and documenting the Sydney gay and lesbian community for over 30 years. In that time there would be hardly a community event that C. Moore hasn’t captured.
Not many people would be aware that she shot the cover photograph for the first issue of a small fortnightly bar and community guide called The Star. That of course grew into the weekly newspaper we know as The Sydney Star Observer.
I’ve also had the pleasure of being photographed by C.Moore. I can recall one Saturday afternoon outside Parliament House in early 1995 when she took a fabulous picture of me leading a conga line of gay and lesbian friends and supporters.
This venture is perhaps her most important. Our Family will capture images of GLBT families and friends. These images will be put on a DVD to be distributed to educational institutions and community organisations to help raise awareness of the changing faces and diversity of families in modern Australia.
Family in the GLBT community can cover many different things – for example loving couples, loving couples and their children or close knit groups of friends.
It’s also a timely project, coming just a few months after the NSW Parliament adopted my bill to allow same sex couples to adopt. My bill was very much a pro-family bill. It recognised the diversity of families and will give children greater security and certainty to children with loving and caring parents.
So, I encourage you to support C.Moore’s project and be photographed with your GLBT family as I declare the Our Families Photo Booth open.
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