Portraits of an LGBTI+ Generation comes to Pitlochy Festival Theatre's Out in the Hills from 16 - 18 January 2026.

Find out more about the Pitlochy exhibition here.

From May 2019 to June 2021, LGBTI+ Elders Social Dance Clubs, part of The Coming Back Out Ball, were presented all around the country for the whole rainbow community, creating a welcoming space for the community to come together, share stories and meet new people.

Tiu Makkonen was the photographer in residence with The Coming Back Out Ball project. They along with filmmakers Graeme Roger and Ania Urbanowska created, in collaboration with members of the dance club, a multimedia exhibition Portraits of an LGBTI+ Generation.

Social Dance Club members were invited to have their photo taken and be interviewed in a place that means something to them, and their experiences as an LGBTI+ person.

This series of up to 10 portraits of Scottish LGBTI+ Elders, reflecting their own personal experiences, gives us a sense of the varied, rich and remarkable lives of the many LGBTI+ elders living across Scotland.

The exhibition has previously been shared online with a selection of these portraits exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow in 2021, as part of Highland Pride at Eden Court in February 2020, as part of Party Pride in July 2023 and at St John's Hospital, Livingston from October 2024 to February 2025.

Tiu is a photographer from Finland who has been living and working in Scotland for the past decade. Since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with a First Class BA(Hons) Degree in Photography in 2013, she has been balancing both fine art and commercial work mainly in the fields of event, performance and portraiture photography.

She is heavily invested in photographing underrepresented communities within Scotland, from grassroots LGBT+ activism to art festivals, underground parties to national calls for action.

Find out more about her work here.

A National Theatre of Scotland and All the Queens Men co-production, in partnership with Eden Court and Luminate, and in association with Glasgow City Council.