Photos from the 10th anniversary of Braden Summers’ ALL LOVE IS EQUAL

June 30, 2024

Braden Summers

In 2012, I shot the first image for the series ALL LOVE IS EQUAL. My husband (then my boyfriend) challenged me to apply the same romance I portrayed in my work with heterosexual couples to a romance that was more similar to our own.

I took the photo of two men holding hands on London Bridge on a rainy day, and when I posted it on social media, I received a surprisingly positive response that gave me a clear goal. This work had never been created before, and I felt a responsibility to show the world how beautiful same-sex love can be. Six months later, I decided to use this London image as a springboard to create culturally diverse photo illustrations of same-sex couples. My producer Greg Jaroszewski and I set out with the intention of working in Paris, Mumbai, Lebanon, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and San Francisco. We ended up with a total of 14 original photos, which were published on The Advocate and Buzzfeed websites on Valentine’s Day 2014. The project was funded through Kickstarter. For the next two years, I seemingly nonstop answered interview questions about the project from all corners of the world. I received love letters and hate mail in equal measure. Ultimately, I was honored to give same-sex romance an elevated platform, seen by millions, created with the same sense of style and beauty standards we’ve seen in luxury advertising for decades.

Related: Braden Summers photographs fashion for this moment

A month after the series was released online, Marriott International scheduled a meeting with me. They asked me if I would continue ALL LOVE IS EQUAL and use Marriott hotels as the backdrop for each image. We spent months building their latest campaign, “Love Travels,” which won major advertising awards. The campaign spread and went beyond the LGBTQ+ community to portray love, romance, and family among various other minority groups. Corporate support of a personal series was the ultimate validation, knowing that my original intention was to inspire major brands to include same-sex couples in their mainstream campaigns.

Braden Summers

Ten years later, in 2024, I reflect on the importance of this work. On one hand, depicting a same-sex couple in an ad campaign will no longer energize news cycles like it did in 2014, and I’m proud to have played my part in changing that narrative. On the other hand, we’re seeing the majority of brands scale back their Pride campaigns this year after the political right backlashed against them, angry that companies like Bud Light were sponsoring transgender voices like Dylan Mulvaney. There’s more work to be done. And I’ve kept working. My film “Elevate,” which I created in 2019, was shot with the intention of illustrating a “day in the life” of a transgender person—humanizing both their inherent beauty and their struggle.

As for my own career, Marriott International was ultimately the only brand to date that has reached out to me to continue the mission of bringing romance to the forefront for same-sex couples. I have struggled to find my place in this industry outside of that niche, and the pandemic certainly hasn’t helped with that. My own work has expanded and moved more towards fashion and beauty to accommodate the celebrity-centric life in Los Angeles. The work has been slow, but the drive and desire to create beautiful and captivating imagery will always push me forward. There is real power in visual representation, I will continue to use my platform to expand and challenge our own ideals and standards of beauty – as they are within all of us.

Check out the campaign 10 years later below.