Jean-Pierre Laffont's 'Rebels with a Cause' Chronicles US Protest Movements

Jean-Pierre Laffont's photobook 'Rebels with a Cause', published by Damiani Books in September, compiles over 150 photographs documenting civil rights struggles, protests, and queer visibility in the United States. The book includes images from the second Gay Pride Parade in New York City on June 28, 1970, as well as portraits of a trans sex worker commune in an apartment on 65th Street, Vietnam activists hanging the US flag upside down from the Statue of Liberty, and the Savage Skulls gang in the Bronx. Laffont, born in Algiers in 1935 and immigrated to the US in 1965, organized the photographs into thematic sections such as 'Gangs: Arousing City Phenomenon' and 'LGBTQ+: The Birth of a Movement'. The foreword is written by Pulitzer-nominated author Lucy Sante. The release coincides with a rise in queerphobic crimes in Germany: the Federal Criminal Police Office reported 2,377 such offenses in 2025, a 12.8% increase from the previous year, while programs like 'Demokratie leben!' are expiring. Andre Lehmann of LSVD+ called this 'a slap in the face of all queer people'. Laffont's images of tenderness and solidarity serve as a reminder of what must be defended, especially after the attack on Berlin's Christopher Street Day, where a 21-year-old Islamist killed a woman. The memorial site in Tiergarten now features a young maple tree surrounded by notes and flowers, and a rainbow-colored bench.