Kuala Lumpur Malaysia – Elska

Beschrijving

Elska is a project devoted to sharing our voices and our bodies through honest photography and personal stories. Through our publications, we take you to different cities around the world, introduce you to a dozen or so local guys, and let you get to know them and a bit about gay life in their city. Filled with positivity, sincerity, ad-free and lovingly made, Elska is an independent gay mag that you can truly be proud to own.

Elska Magazine is our flagship product, your key to discovering each Elska city through its local boys and local stories. They are over 150 pages, split into individual chapters that focus on a local guy, filled with evocative images taken of him in the city and at home, plus the story he wrote for us. The experience is most intimate, letting readers feel like they’ve travelled there with us and really gotten to know these men.

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‘Elska Kuala Lumpur’ is our twenty-ninth issue and our seventh visit to Asia, this time showcasing the capital of a country that is famous for its diversity and infamous perhaps for its continued criminalisation of homosexuality. Often overlooked among other Southeast-Asian metropolises in favour of holiday hotspots like Bangkok or Bali, we might have passed it by too if it wasn’t for all the interest from local boys imploring us to visit. That enthusiasm convinced us to pay them a visit, and we’re so glad we did.

Inside this issue you’ll get to know over a dozen Malaysian lads who we met on our trip. We photographed them in their homes and in their neighbourhoods, revealing their personalities and their bodies via honest photography and through personal stories contributed by each of them. Some of the stories featured here include:

• Sam Z, who introduces us to that universal gay experience, a visit to a local sauna, detailing the excitement, the fear, the lust, and the disappointment;

• Gems A, who describes how rare and beautiful it is when a trans man can find a partner who isn’t fixated only on ‘the equipment’ underneath the clothes. It’s a story that I hope reminds us that trans visibility is too often accompanied by a fetishisation that renders the person within still invisible;

• Jules N, who talks about his mental health issues, sharing some of the things that help him get through each day, as well as sharing how very hard it is to keep going in an environment where he feels so unwelcome;

• Ashul S, who illuminates the sort of ‘coming out without actually coming out’ story that is common in many queer lives, whereby one can free themselves little by little through erasing ambiguity until truth is revealed, even if LGBTQ vocabulary is never itself used – highlighting an acceptance that is real yet never really complete;

• Greg B, who opens his bedroom door in an explicit tale of the perfect encounter, a tale full of warm mouths, sticky bodies, and white ribbons all around.

Auteur: Liam Campbell

Jaar van uitgave: 2020

Aantal pagina’s: 196

Bindwijze: paperback

Uitgeverij: Elska Magazine