When I was in high school, every Thursday after class, I would take the metro to the big public library in downtown Montreal. There, I’d go straight to the photography section and grab every book I could find. I was filled with a voracious hunger for images, although unsure of what I was looking for in them. The first time I saw queer bodies in a photograph, I got my answer. The photo was in Wolfgang Tillmans’ book “Truth Study Center.” It was a sweaty picture of two white men kissing. I became obsessed with the book. I’d borrow it over and over and I studied it religiously. In it, I found an intimacy.
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The first time I saw trans bodies in that library was in Nan Goldin’s work, the classic “Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” an autobiographical slideshow depicting intimate and mundane scenes in the artist’s life in 1980s New York, including snapshots of post-stonewall queer subculture. Soon after, I encountered Bettina Rheims’s monograph “Modern Lovers,” which offered minimalist black and white portraits of early 1990s gender-non-conforming youth. My life exists in two parts: before I saw these images, and after. It was like seeing myself in the mirror for the first time.The Nan Goldin, Bettina Rheims, and Wolfgang Tillmans books made me, at 18, feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself. But as time went by, and I began to document myself, my friends, and my own transition, I started to question what it meant that all the images of trans bodies I was exposed to growing up were shot through a cisgender lens. What is left unsaid?In order to try to answer that question, I reached out to nine gender non-conforming and trans photographers—some close friends of mine, and some artists whose work I’ve admired from afar—and asked each of them to send me a photo or project of their own that focuses on trans and/or non-binary selfhood or community. The idea was to explore the intimate dynamic that manifests when trans individuals witness each other (or themselves). I wanted to know: Why do we document ourselves? What does it mean to be seen? What happens when see each other? Below are their answers. — Laurence Philomene
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B. G-Osborne: "waiting for my new skin to bloom"
Elle Pérez: "alternative possibilities of sex"
Hobbes Ginsberg: still alive
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Jess T. Dugan: Every Breath We Drew
June T. Sanders: "photography as an act of love"
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Lia Clay: "beauty and dimension beyond subversion"
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Marina Labarthe: Enby Spoken Histories
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Shoog McDaniel: "star-filled moments of joy and wonder"
Texas Isaiah: "what has always existed"
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