Because our first exhibit two years ago, BBE's Black Health Exposition, was so successful, we decided to follow up with another one, this time focusing on our spirituality and its connection to physical and mental health.

A growing amount of scientific evidence is showing that spiritual well-being strongly supports physical and mental health. Spiritual health helps people to cope better with virtually all of life’s challenges – everything from chronic illnesses, healing, and addictions, to loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

As gay/bi/same-gender-loving/gender-variant African Americans, we face more than our share of challenges, but too often feel excluded or rejected by our religious communities. So, during our Leadership Institute Retreat in the fall of 2007, Black Brothers Esteem decided to use another Photovoice project to help local African-American LGBT folks rediscover and strengthen spiritual health. This beautiful collection of striking images and powerful texts, Soul Food: Connecting the Body, Mind, & Soul, is the result.

Sixteen of us chose to participate as photographers, but all of us worked together every step of the way to complete this project. First, we trained ourselves to improve our photography skills, and gave ourselves eight weeks to document what supports our spiritual health and the connection to our physical and mental health. Then we edited our exposures, chose by jury selection each photographer ’s best photo, and interviewed him or her about that image, so personally meaningful text could accompany it.

Producing the exhibit itself was another collaboration, demanding that we researched different gallery locations, directed the publicity, hung the images (with a little help from our photo consultant G. Cole Allee), and wrote these panels and the speeches for the opening.

We like using images and words to express ourselves and our realities. We hope they give you an opportunity to see through our eyes how to support spiritual health, and how to use it to support physical and mental health. This is one more way in which we take care of ourselves, and serve as role models for others, inside and outside of our various communities.

May our visions and words inspire you to know that ‘soul food’ supports your body, mind, and soul.