Trans Pride 2025, London26 Images
This year’s London Trans+ Pride was the biggest yet, with over 100,000 people taking to the streets of central London last Saturday and smashing the previous year’s record of 60,000. The theme was ‘Existence and Resistance’, which couldn’t be more timely: while Britain’s anti-trans backlash has been brewing for around a decade now, 2025 has seen the most extreme attacks on trans rights yet. Trans people now face blanket exclusion from all manner of “single-sex spaces”, thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling; hate crime rates which increase with every passing year, and severe barriers to accessing healthcare, from an outright ban on puberty blockers for under-18s to years-long waiting lists just to begin the process of medical transition.
For photographer and Dazed Club member Geo Edmunds, the urgency of this year’s event was undeniable. “The political climate right now feels increasingly hostile, with trans rights being debated, rolled back, or erased altogether, both here in the UK and globally. That weight was in the air,” she says. But Trans Pride+ was a celebration as much as a protest. “The atmosphere was electric and overwhelming, but in the best way you could imagine. There was so much love, so much anger and solidarity in the air,” she adds.
Geo’s shots of the day capture this intense mixture of emotions. The slogans on display are explicitly political, ranging from earnest to tongue-in-cheek (“smash the cis-tem for a socialist future”, reads one; “LET THEM PISS”, reads another). But her subjects don’t look angry at all: they are smiling, laughing, embracing or, in one gorgeous image, reclining on grass in what looks like a moment of serenity. The idea that “joy is a form of resistance” may have become a cliche, but there’s undeniably something powerful in seeing so many trans people having a good time, publicly and collectively, when the British establishment seems determined to make their lives as miserable as possible.
Geo Edmunds
Geo says she felt slightly nervous at first, having never photographed such a large event, but got stuck into it right away. “I loved capturing landscape shots, creating images from different groups, people and outfits. The crowd went back for miles and miles. I felt captivated by all of the beauty,” she says. Once the march started, she weaved in and out of the crowd, perching on a curb one moment to snap people as they passed by and heading back into the fray the next. “I met so many lovely individuals, and chatted about what this pride meant to us,” she says.
One conversation, which began when a stranger asked her for a drag of her cigarette, stands out in particular. “They told me how this was their first Pride too, after moving to London last year, and we ended up chatting for an hour about the importance of it,” she says. “They began to open up about their experiences with gender, and how much this space of queer joy and visibility means to them, especially coming from a background and culture where being openly trans can be life-threatening.”
“But they also spoke about the heaviness they carry, especially in light of recent legal setbacks and the global violence trans people continue to face, particularly in South Asia [where they are from],” Geo continues. “They told me: ‘Being part of the struggle itself gives me a purpose to live… I don’t know how it is to live other than to fight.’ That hit me deeply. Among all the colour and energy of the day, that quiet exchange – just two strangers on the grass – was the moment that truly defined London Trans+ Pride for me.”
Geo Edmunds
For Geo, taking portraits is about catching in-between moments – when someone notices her camera and their expression softens into a smile, or they laugh or shift their demeanour. “I love that flicker of honesty. I try to be quick and intuitive, letting things happen rather than overly directing them. It’s less about perfect poses and more about movement, feeling, and presence,” she says.
In 2023, Geo launched Planet Lesbian, a photography-led creative agency which originally started as a zine. She is currently working on a book of the same title, which will feature eight different shoots of queer photography. Among her influences, she lists Morgan Maher, Michella Bredahl, Luisa Opalesky, Chloe Sherman, who captured the queer scene in 1990s San Francisco, and Nan Goldin, who rose to fame by chronicling, among other things, the devastating impact of the Aids crisis in 1980s New York.
That influence is evident in the care and attention that Geo brings to today’s LGBTQ+ community. “I care about capturing people as they really are,” she says. “Especially in queer spaces, I think photography can be a form of witnessing. It’s a way of saying: I see you, and you look incredible, exactly as you are.”
