Francesca Volpi

Darwin mourns the death of his brother at his funeral.

Ruby, JLO and other members of the LGBT orgnisation Arcoiris walk to their spot in Tegucigalpa they call El Obelisco, where they work during the night in prostitution. It is often hard for LGBT people to find a job.

Darwin prepares before a beauty contest for LGBT people.

DARWIN

In Honduras having a different kind of sexual orientation or gender identity exposes people to danger discrimination. However the country has not specific law against homosexuality, this condition of vulnerability is worsened by the context of general violence in Honduras, a country where 92% of killings get unpunished. In 2017, there have been 34 murders of LGBT community members in Honduras, according to the observatory on violent deaths of the organization Cattrachas. One of those people was Marco Tullio Montoya who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in April 2017, his body had signs of torture and was set ablaze alive according to the forensic exams. The story focuses on his brother Darwin, 23 years old, also gay, and his life and how it’s been affected after his loss. For him, Marco wasn’t only brother but a guide and best friend, in a context where loneliness and exclusion is common amongst young LGBT people. More than one year later, Marco’s murder remains unpunished and Darwin has been threatened by the same gang and was forced to flee the country seeking asylum in Europe. The reportage, aims to be a way into the LGBT community as part of bigger project about Honduras and the various reasons that move people to flee and try to build their lives somewhere else.

Francesca Volpi

I was born in 1985 in Italy. I am a freelance independent photographer working professionally since 2013. I handled assignments for various publications and worked on projects in collaboration with NGO’s. I am interested in the human beings and with my work I try to tell character-driven stories, dissecting how war, urban conflicts, climate change and poverty affect lives of people across the globe. Photography and Video are my medium of choice. In recent years my work has focused on the impact of the ongoing war in Ukraine, and stories of extraordinary people in Honduras, where I worked on LGBT issues, health system, environment defenders and climate change and internal migration. I graduated from the London College of Communication’s Journalism department and obtained a Master in Photojournalism from the Higher Institute of Photography and Integrated Communications (ISFCI) in Rome. I lived in London, Rome, Paris and Honduras for five months in 2017 – and worked in and reported from Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, the Balkans, Egypt and Honduras.