Jeff Sheng played tennis his first three years at Thousand Oaks High School in California, but opted not to play as a senior. He was closeted, afraid to come out at the time.
Now 34, and still based in Southern California, Sheng is back on the court. He's not holding back his swing, nor his sexual orientation. After all, he plays in a Gay and Lesbian Tennis Alliance ( GLTA ) league and also on the club tennis team at Stanford University, where he is a PhD candidate in sociology.
Sheng spent 13 years, from 2003 through 2015, photographing out LGBT athletes—and 202 of them from high schools and colleges across the U.S. and Canada now appear in Sheng's brilliant coffee table book, released in early June—Fearless: Portraits of LGBT Student Athletes. The 316-page book is published by Somebody Books, and it retails for $39.50 at www.fearlessbookstore.com .
"The book is a personal memoir about my experience as a closeted high school athlete and of photographing Fearless later in life as a way to capture the stories and portraits of student-athletes who were out to their teammates, something that I could never be," Sheng said.
The book features an afterword essay by retired NBA player Jason Collins, who is gay.
"Coming out is one of the bravest actions that a person can take," Collins said in a statement. "The fact that these individuals are so young, still in high school and college, makes their decision to step forward even more remarkable. It gives us hope and makes us proud to see the next generation boldly embracing their true selves at such a young age. They are individuals that come from different races, religions, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Their images displayed in this book are truly inspirational."
The book pays tribute to the original eight-stripe LGBT pride flag, designed by artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. Instead of just one cover, FEARLESS has eight different specialty athlete covers showcasing the diversity of the LGBT sports community. ( All books are identical inside ). When stacked together, the eight different book versions form a three-dimensional representation of the original 1978 LGBT pride flag.
"I'm very happy about the book's release. It's been a very long project and I'm very proud of the book," said Sheng, who, in mid-June, read from the book at the annual Nike LGBT Sports Summit in Portland, Oregon. "I hadn't read the text out loud before to anyone else, so that was definitely rewarding, but also emotional at the same time."
Sheng said he was "very fortunate" that Collins agreed to contribute.
"I didn't tell [Collins] what to write at all; I just gave him a bunch of sketches of the ongoing book. He returned an essay back to me that was more than I could have hoped for. It's a really great piece of writing," Sheng said.
Later in the summer and into the fall, he will be doing a series of book-signings at various retail Nike stores around the country. ( A full schedule has not been finalized yet. )
For more information about the book, or to order, go to www.fearlessbookstore.com .
