Eon Roberts
Always Been Here
Always Been Here is a campaign dedicated to shining a light on LGBT history, with a specific look at the history and culture during and before the AIDS epidemic, to challenge the belief of non-cishet (and non- Western) identities and sexualities having been a recent development, and to inspire and educate LGBT viewers on their history.
The LGBT community is an umbrella term for several smaller communities that experience the same type of prejudice and share similar experiences of ostracization from heteronormative society due to their complex and differing experiences of sexuality and gender identity compared to cisgender and heterosexual individuals. This ostracization has several factors contributing to it, from religious reasoning to societal indoctrination. Some of those smaller communities include gay men, gay women (also known as lesbians), bisexual people, and transgender people (a community that can be broken down further into transgender men, transgender women, and others who exist outside of the typical gender binary).
Some of the historical figures featured in this campaign’s collateral may not fit into our modern labels, but that does not mean they are not of historical importance to the LGBT community. The LGBT community shares several common goals, including total marriage equality, freedom of gender and sexual expression, and the end of discrimination in all aspects of life and society. The LGBT community has gained increased visuality in the past 30 or so years, and there has been an exponential increase in millennials and Generation Z identifying as LGBT compared to previous generations, but many think of LGBT identities and sexualities as a modern idea/concept, a perception that isn’t helped by the fact that the majority of recorded LGBT history is either ignored or erased.
