Elska, the stunning photo magazine committed to spotlighting the bodies and voices of queer men around the globe,  celebrated its sixth year in the business earlier this year and is back with a new edition exploring the Gay Black capital of America, Atlanta.

With past issues featuring queer men from Dublin, Berlin, Sydney, Toronto, Poland and Malaysia amongst others, the aim of the magazine was always to show “that LGBTQ people exist everywhere, and while the challenges facing these communities vary, we all essentially want the same thing – to love, to be seen, and to be free.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Elska Magazine (@elskamagazine)

The Elska team explain on their site that they  “went to Atlanta for a week, met a bunch of local guys, and then took photos and gathered stories from them, which we present to you here. Atlanta is the biggest city in America’s Deep South, a place that many consider the gay capital of Black America. Shot in the aftermath of an extremely politically charged year, where Atlanta and the work of Stacey Abrams almost single-handedly led to the defeat of Donald Trump, this was a great time to celebrate the city with our Elska spotlight.”

They expand further on the timing of the Atlanta trip writing, “Certainly in this era, politics made an appearance, both in the stories and in the images, but it’s not by any means a political issue of Elska, even if there may be a cheeky little appearance by Stacey Abrams and Jon Ossoff.”

Yet even beyond such literal references to politics, sharing these queer voices in what many would consider the conservative American heartland is a political act itself, as is the act of sharing these queer bodies, many of which don’t fit the mould of what mainstream media tends to consider worthy, attractive, or compelling. Without a doubt, all of these men are beautiful and important as they are, and we hope that this issue, and all Elskas, serves as a way of celebrating them.”

Get your copy of Elska Atlanta online here.