Queer Couchsurfing Through Europe: A Photography Book You Can Help Fund

Whitney’s Team Pick:

Ever wanted to backpack through Europe, Turkey and Morocco? You can live vicariously through Brooklyn-based photographers Yael Malka and Cait Oppermann as they backpack through places like Germany, France, Czech Republic, Slovenia, England and the Netherlands on a quest to couchsurf through (and document) queer communities overseas!

The ultimate goal: To make a text and image-based book chronicling the whole two-month journey, from start to finish. They’re going to document every step of the way with rolls and rolls and rolls of film, and they’ll write down words spoken and written. They’ll collect these beautiful (and queer) images in a book to be titled Too Much Information: A Photography Book.

This is where you come in: Malka and Opperman started a Kickstarter for the photography project, and they are currently just over $1000  away from their current goal of $3500, with eight days left. According to the Kickstarter page, the fundraising costs will cover “film, film processing, and the first run of the book.” The two even “promise that any extra funding will not be spent on beer, but will be used to make this book better.” Honesty: the best policy.

“We’re going to take photos of each other every single day, photos of people we stay with, people we meet along the way, photos in transit whether through train, plane, bus or subway,” Oppermann says in the Kickstarter video. “We’re going to collect text interviews from people we stay with and also a lot of journaling from both of us throughout the whole trip.”

Some goodies you can get from funding the Kickstarter project include a digital version of the book viewable on iPad (for a pledge of $10), a postcard sent from Malka and Oppermann on their travels along with the digital book ($20), signed photographs from the trip with the digital book and postcard ($35), and a physical copy of the book, digital copy, and all of the previous awards (for $55).

Cait (on the left) and Yael (on the right)

Malka and Oppermann are a couple who both attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and majored in photography. Malka’s work has appeared in the Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum, and one of her bodies of work, Coveted, deals with “girlhood, fetish and artifice.”

Opperman’s work has appeared in the Humble Arts Foundation, and Artists in Bushwick. Her photo series, Necessary Roughness, discusses her “transition from childhood and adolesence in the Midwest and Adulthood in New York.”

You can check out their Kickstarter project for Too Much Information here.

You can check out Malka’s website here, and Opperman’s website here.

And you can view some of Malka and Opperman’s photos below.

by Cait Oppermann

 

by Cait Oppermann

 

by Yael Malka

 

by Yael Malka

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Whitney Pow

Whitney is a lover of food, books, comic books and journals made for left-handed people. They are a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University, where their research focuses on queer video games and new media. They are also a graphic designer, writer and editor who has worked for places like Opium Magazine, Literary Death Match, Publishers Weekly and The Feminist Press. Check out their website at whitneypow.com and follow them on Twitter @whitneypow.

Whitney has written 53 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. Ever wanted to backpack through Europe, Turkey and Morocco? – Yes, it’s like a dream of mine. I’ll be checking this out. It kind of reminds me of the book, “Off The Map (http://www.amazon.com/Off-Map-Hib/dp/0970910134). I love anything that has to do with traveling, cultures, languages and exploring unknown territory, so this is right up my alley.

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