A Celebration • Art Series

Thankfully, Mustafa says that his experience of coming out was, ‘not horrific’, but he also understands this isn’t the experience of many folk and he wants to be part of the tide of change for the better in this regard.  This series of photographs show confident role models for young people to identify with. Mustafa notes, “Growing up I didn’t have any role models in the media that I could identify with and I think this is so important for young people. As a young teenager, if you don’t have any role models, it can make it really hard to accept yourself for who you are. In my experience I spent most of my teenage years hiding my sexuality from myself and everyone around me.”

Fearless Femme are incredibly proud to showcase this and all our contributing artist’s powerful work; art that helps people find comfort in their own skin is a truly important thing.

Mustafa is a Scottish photographer born in Glasgow formally trained at the Glasgow School of Art. Mustafa’s work is very much portraiture based and he enjoys blurring the lines between documentary and fashion imagery. His fashion work has a solid grounding in traditional British documentary photography practices, but still engages with and caters for a fashion conscious audience. Much of Mustafa’s work looks at youth culture with a particular focus on gender, sexuality and non binary issues. He is a second generation Pakistani immigrant and also happens to be non binary in terms of sexuality so he tries to bring as much of his own experiences to his work, in an effort to increase visibility for his community.