"Representation like this gives us hope and affirmation": Ryan Duffin shoots Pride campaign for Harry's

Shaving brand Harry’s has hired photographer Ryan Duffin to shoot a huge billboard campaign to celebrate Pride month.

It has partnered with The Trevor Project – an American suicide prevention and crisis intervention organisation for the LGBTQ+ community – in a month-long campaign that has seen the company launch a new José Roda-designed razor, promoted rather ably by Duffin’s eye-catching and important billboard work.

“I’ve been dying to work with Harry’s for years, but the right project never came up,” Ryan tells It’s Nice That. “When Harry’s creative team reached out with the possibility of working with them on a Pride campaign with 100 per cent of profits going directly to The Trevor Project, I was instantly sold.”

Ryan and the team at Harry’s then bounced ideas and reference points back and forth before alighting upon what would become the finished concept and fleshed out execution.

The photographer tells us that “it was important to all of us for the campaign to be completely queer and femme inclusive, because it’s not just masc dads who can shave if they want to,” reminding us that “drag queens, the trans community, and gender fluid/nonconforming individuals can all go under the blade as well, and they deserve to be seen.”

Describing the collaborators at Harry’s as “amazing to work with and extremely passionate about this project,” Duffin is keen to point out that “there’s a huge difference between companies that uplift queer people with their campaigns and those who engage in corporate pandering.”

When asked how important campaigns of this kind, that is campaigns which engender queer visibility within American public life, Duffin says that “representation like this – giant billboards of beautiful queer faces – gives us hope and affirmation in our identities, and is a signal to other LGBTQ+ people that we are all in this together, and need to continue this march forward. I hope that this campaign shows people that progress hasn’t become stagnant – queer people are here, have always been here, and we deserve to champion them 365 days a year.”