Contributors to Scientific American’s April 2024 Issue
Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories
Gioncarlo Valentine
Gioncarlo Valentine, Families Under Attack
For this issue’s story by journalist Marla Broadfoot on families threatened by anti-LGBTQ legislation, photographer Gioncarlo Valentine (above) took a drive down the East Coast from Massachusetts to Florida. “I do a lot of road trips,” he says. “I think I enjoy processing [these experiences] in between the stops.” In the car, he and his assistant read Broadfoot’s article aloud as they prepared to meet and photograph the people who had shared their stories. The families were “really remarkable and kind”—the mother of the first family they met welcomed them with a pot pie and has remained in touch. “Nobody was just there to be photographed. Everybody talked; everybody told us their stories.”
It was a heavy, emotional process, says Valentine, a queer photographer and writer based between New York City and Philadelphia. For his work, he draws on experiences from his previous career—Valentine served as a case manager for seven years, inspired by the social workers who changed his life when he was in foster care or chronically unhoused. “Holding people’s stories is the foundation of my work as an artist,” he says. “It’s difficult to make images about really somber and sad stories when you are personally indicted in them,” but it’s necessary work in the face of such injustice.
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