Hove photographer wants LGBTQ+ people who remember 1967 to sit for portraits

Proud Studios^1,2, a community interest company with a studio in Hove, is looking for LGBTQ+ people who were alive in 1967 to sit for a portrait and talk about what the law change of that year meant to them. The project, In Private, was first reported by the Argus³.

2027 marks 60 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 partly decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales. The Act covered men over 21 in private, which is where the title comes from. It left a great deal of criminal law and social hostility in place. Women, trans people and people elsewhere in the UK weren’t covered by it, though the studio says many of them still lived with its fallout and stigma.

Each person sits for a portrait session and a recorded conversation built around a short set of questions: where they were and how old they were when the law changed, whether they noticed any press coverage, and whether anything changed for them before and after.

The studio wants a real spread of lives, including people who were married or not out, people who were threatened or arrested, “and people who simply carried on”. You do not need to have been an activist or to have a dramatic story.

“Sixty years is a long time, and 1967 is still living memory for many people,” said Chris Jepson, the photographer who founded Proud Studios. He has photographed the LGBTQ+ scene for more than 30 years, and his earlier projects include portraits of veterans of the London and Sussex Gay Liberation Front.

Sessions run from November to December 2026, at the sitter’s home, in a community space or at the Hove studio. Sitters approve their images and edited text, and can withdraw up to an agreed date before anything goes to print. The finished portraits and testimonies will be shown during LGBT History Month in February 2027, and the studio is looking into other pop-up exhibitions that month.