The Advocate Issue # 1027 June 2009

Forty Under 40: The Advocate
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Lucky Michaels | Photographer | 29 | New York City

LGBT teens make up an outsize proportion of runaway youths nationwide. With disconcertingly few programs to help them, they are particularly vulnerable to homelessness and its residual dangers. Even in New York City, only 75 beds exist for this entire demographic. Twenty-six of them are at Sylvia’s Place, a harm- and crisis-reduction facility run by the Metropolitan Community Church. Its director is Lucky Michaels, who joined the program at its 2002 inception as an overnight counselor. Then a photography student at Parsons, Michaels was himself a refugee from conservative Traverse City, Mich., where he’d endured ostracism and the suicides of two gay friends. Michaels fused his photographic talent with his mission in Shelter, a beautifully spare, unsentimental book documenting the first three years of Sylvia’s Place through Michaels’s mesmerizing photos and first-person testimonials from residents. Shelter is “an advocacy tool,” Michaels says. “There is still a lack of services and representation for this population. They’re essentially invisible. People would rather talk about marriage equality and more attractive issues.” He’s currently at work on a second “participant observer photo essay,” two related photo exhibitions, and a music video (featuring Soren Anders).

From the Editor:javascript:void(0)

I proceeded to tell her about the issue we were currently working on -- this summer double issue -- and how on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall we were featuring 40 accomplished gay men and lesbians under the age of 40, people who owe at least part of their success to what happened at the Stonewall Inn 40 years ago.

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The Advocate Issue # 1027 June 2009