PHOTO CREDITS All black & white photos of Matthew on this site, including the banner photo, were taken byGina van Hoof.
Judy Shepard to NYC Pride:
We Must Tell Our Stories
Judy
Shepard, with husband Dennis, served as a Grand Marshal for NYC Pride late last
month. In her letter to participants in the Pride Guide 2010, she remarked:
"Pride is our chance as a true community, whether we are gay, or straight,
or anywhere else along the spectrum, to show the world our determination to
live openly and equally. People need to hear our stories. They are the most
powerful tools we have for erasing hate."
Jennifer Beals New Book to Benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation
During the six years we were shooting The L Word, I kept a photographic journal of the cast and crew, born out of a profound desire to create a bulwark against my rapidly eroding memory. It was an era of my life I was eager to preserve: I wanted to remember the cast, the readthrus, the dinners, the rehearsals — everything. I took pictures and saved my scripts, callsheets, and memos and organized them every year. I used them for reference as the seasons moved on, but frankly I held onto them because I knew I would get a kick out of looking at them as the years passed. Mostly, I wanted to remember the joy, because no matter where the storylines went, we always managed to have fun.
Years ago, I started a tradition of making of making a photo book, to give as a gift to the cast and crew, after completing projects that were near and dear to my heart. As I started working on my cast-and-crew present for The L Word, I realized this wouldn't be like the others. The L Word was about the power of storytelling. And it was particularly unique because there were two streams of stories being told. Clearly we were telling your stories, but in some way we were telling our stories — the story of a group of colleagues who became friends while endeavoring to make something worthwhile. Somewhere along the line there was a kind of convergence. Somewhere underneath the plotlines of The L Word ran our own stories of friendship and struggle. These photographs evoke the various bonds and battles we as a cast endured.
The L Word as a series was, at its core, about community and that played out behind the scenes as the cast formed its own community. But the series also was about all of you who made our collective journey possible. That is why I wanted to make the book available to fans of the show.
The proceeds of the book and prints will go to several different charities including the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Mia Kirshner's I Live Here, a Project of Operation USA and The Pablove Foundation, because I wanted to give back to the organizations that have meant so much to me.
