Jenny Nordberg / Adam Ferguson: Bacha Posh

Following up the Sworn Virgins of Albania, a project by Pepa Hristova, which went viral a few months ago - and will get an entry of its own on this blog soon - an interesting story from Afghanistan emerged recently. Jenny Nordberg, journalist, tells the stories of girls who live as boys to fulfill a social role, who live up to their parents' and society's expectations this way.

Bacha posh Mehran. Photo: Adam Ferguson

These so-called bacha posh are girls made boys to save their families from starving, or mere ridicule in a strictly patriarchal society: Girls and women are often not allowed to work, and families with only daughters are frowned upon. It is yet another example that a change of gender does not need to happen on the basis of body dysphoria and has nothing to do with sexuality - on the contrary, both the bacha posh and the sworn virgins from Albania emphasise the importance of virginity. The change takes place outwardly, through clothes, change of speech and behaviour; what is beneath the clothes is never mentioned or shown. As Mehran's (see above) headteacher points out, "what sets little boys and girls apart is all exterior: pants versus skirts". It is an accepted practice for little girls in Afghanistan, and the only way to ditch the rigorous binary gender regime in which women are valued far less than men.

Zahra, living as a boy since being very little. Photo: Adam Ferguson

As opposed to the sworn virgins, the bacha posh maintain their switched gender roles only until they reach the age of marriage. This only means that children in Afghanistan become part of the patriarchal system very early, and especially the bacha posh experience how fickle freedom can be. Nordberg quotes Robin Morgan on how destructive patriarchy can be to the life of an individual: "[Birth] Sex is a reality, gender and freedom are ideas."

Jenny Nordberg's extensive findings have been featured in the Guardian and The Atlantic, among others, and will be published in a book soon.

Rob Lebow/Masha Kupets: Gorgeous

What happens if you take popular drag culture and pimp it up with "glamour, glamour, glamour"? Photographer Rob Lebow and Creative Director Masha Kupets have tried and the result is Gorgeous, a 'coffee table photography book' aimed to be released in 2014. Gorgeous will feature several well-known US-American artists from the LGBTQ scene, or as Lebow puts it: "It will include the entire LGBTQ spectrum: androgyny, drag queens, drag kings, gender benders, trans, plus a few surprises for shock and awe", all glammed up for spectacular portrait shots, their personal stories added in text form. According to its makers, the book is an attempt to celebrate the culture, and at the same time to educate about non-binary gender expression and challenge gender norms.
The mainstream fascination with drag culture is nothing new - think of La Cage Aux Folles from the 1970s, Priscilla, The Queen of the Desert from the 1990s, or RuPaul's ever so popular Drag Race. While the gay website Queerty assumes that the topic might be "challenging or unfamiliar to a lot of people", I'd argue that most people have seen and are not too fussed with a drag queen here and there. By nature it is fun and exciting on the surface, and deep at its best and tragic at its worst underneath. It has a history - after all, the Stonewall riots in 1969 were led by transvestites and trans people - and it has its own, brilliant, successful way of answering problems such as gender dysphoria, homophobia or transphobia. But most of all, it is so outspoken, so flamboyant, such a feast for the eye and the mind alike that it deserves to be celebrated.
I believe that Lebow and Kupets do not really need the slightly superficial educational approach which they repeat in empty phrases in their interviews over and over. Gorgeous has all the potential to be, well, gorgeous the way it is. The portraits are stunning, echoing great photographers such as Richard Avedon and playing on old-school Hollywood glamour in their simplistic, straight-forward, studio style. They are celebrating the diversity indeed, by capturing the great personas of the subjects, reverberating the vibes, the pride, the playfulness in simple and always beautiful black and white.

Cake Moss 

The Kickstarter for the project just failed to raise the required funding. The Gorgeous Project is not giving up, though. I'd love to see it succeed, because these pictures are so great to look at, they deserve a bit of good paper and nice printing. Maybe a good book will actually help the matter, and promote progressive gender conceptions, just by being lovely and approachable - a little bit of iconic glamour never hurts, and if there's one thing you can say about drag artists, they never fail to stand their ground.

Ernie Omega

Nazik Armenakian: Transgenders in Armenia

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This year, at least 238 trans people have been murdered - and this count does not include the numerous cases of suicide after transphobic violence. We need to remember them - "We can't bring back the trans people that have lost their lives but we can stop the body count increasing." (Ava Vidal)
Most murders were counted in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. We must not forget, though, that transphobia is the daily fare in many other countries, too - it often starts with a smirk or a sarcastic remark, and ends in physical assaults, and many people are not even aware of what they are doing, when they casually use the word "tranny", or misgender a trans person. In other cases, people are fully aware - because hate is spreading, and as Russia is currently pointing out, gender and sexual minorities are an easy target.

Nazik Armenakian is a photojournalist, and in her long-term project about the LGBT community in post-Soviet Armenia, she sheds light on a few lives which are well-acquainted with transphobia and violence: the lives of transgender sex workers she met on Armenian streets. In an interview she describes how difficult it was to take these pictures, how afraid many people were: "Unlike biologically female sex workers, transgender sex workers are always in danger and are frequently assaulted." Armenia legally ruled out discrimination against homosexuals and transgender, but in everyday life, the threat remains. It needed a lot of time to build up trust until the women would let her into their apartments.
The result are sensitive, careful pictures, showing the fragility of the women. Some of them play with light and shadow, hiding parts of faces and bodys; often, the faces are averted from the camera. Armenakian rejects any blame of victimising, however: "For them, being photographed is a way of establishing themselves among society".
It is an innocent, curious approach that Armenakian takes there - the equation of visibility with establishment. It is only fair when you read her describing her confusion when she first met these sex workers, and found her notions of 'male' and 'female' were seriously challenged. She overcame her first shock, began talking to the women, learned their stories, shared their stories. It's a beginning, and sets a good example not only for her Armenian compatriots, but to everyone. To end with Ava Vidal: "You don't have to be personally responsible for anyone's death, being complicit by remaining silent is bad enough. Be better. Do better."

Sara Davidmann: Ken. To be destroyed

Visual artist and photographer Sara Davidmann has been an outspoken ally for the queer and transgendered in the UK for a long time - starting in 1999, and publishing her book Crossing The Line in 2003. Although I know the book pretty well, she disappeared off my radar for a while, until yesterday, when the Guardian published a piece on her latest project, Ken. To be destroyed, in which she carefully tells the life of her transgender uncle Ken. I took the opportunity and checked out her website. I was surprised by the extent to which she had dived into the subject matter, and the variety her work encompassed. She has certainly come a long way since Crossing The Line.
Davidmann has always had the best intentions. "I quickly realised that generally accepted ideas of cross-dressers are drastically inadequate", she writes in Crossing The Line before embarking upon a tour de force through cross-dressing, drag and male-to-female transgender. One of her main assets is definitely her close collaboration, which includes using a smaller, unobtrusive camera and editing the pictures with her subjects (as she recently told Coventry photography students). After the book, she would go on to explore gender, sex and sexuality in all directions, unbiasedly and with a natural curiosity; many of her projects express important thoughts about the ambiguity of gender, or about power relations between photographer and subject, or as in the case of her project view point, the viewer and the subject.
However, I always felt that her good intentions not necessarily do her photography a favour. Many of the pictures in Crossing The Line felt intrusive, slightly voyeuristic, and were in no way aesthetically pleasant - I thought her bystander's POV in the images dominated the book and unfortunately undermined her honest words and sensitively conducted interviews. Her later projects - visible on her website, unlike the images from Crossing The Line - look a lot better, are nicely lit and carefully framed. Yet they feel somewhat overthought, the brilliant texts under the pictures too ambitious for the images. Davidmann is an outstanding thinker, and an important ally, publishing, exhibiting and giving talks a lot; her commitment to make the invisible visible and open the public's eyes to the whole spectrum between 'male' and 'female' can only be applauded. I am just not sure whether her photography is living up to it.
Having said this, I am left to wish her the best for Ken. To be destroyed. The story in the Guardian about the family secret around her transgender uncle is thorough, deep and promising. Handled carefully, it can become beautiful and touching - and without wanting to be mean, I think it is a good thing that Davidmann is working with archive pictures this time.

If you have seen Ken. To be destroyed in Liverpool, let me know what you think!

Zanele Muholi: Being & Faces and Phases

Zinzi and Tozama II

Long overdue, the European Court of Justice recently ruled that homosexual Africans are now entitled to asylum is EU countries, given a persecution in their home country. In Mauritania and Sudan as well as in parts of Nigeria and Somalia, gays face the death penalty; in 27 countries homosexuality is punished with imprisonment of up to 14 years. Homosexuals face discrimination every day, are fearing for their partners, their families, and their lives - the harassment starts with open insult and ends with rape and murder. South Africa is one of the few countries where they are legally protected, but even there, 'corrective rape' and murder of lesbians is the daily fare.

Zanele Muholi is a photographer and activist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her photography is a strong statement against the discrimination, giving black LGBTQI a face and a voice. She was awarded the Index on Censorship arts award 2013 for her work on gender and sexuality in South Africa. Her work is beautiful and powerful - particularly her candid look on South African lesbian couples from the series Being. Her style is straight forward in (or despite) its versatility, including classic portraits, changing between colour and black and white, staged and observed. It feels very honest - her work shows what normally stays hidden, it is a brave testimony of love, and of existence.

Katlego Mashiloane and Nosipho Lavuta, Ext. 2, Lakeside, Johannesburg 2007

Ayanda Magozola, Kwanele South, Katlehong, Johannesburg, 2012

The last picture is from another award-winning series by Muholi, Faces and Phases, which is literally giving South African LGBTQI a face (or faces). These are the simplest portraits one can imagine - and in their simplicity they are powerful, they are poignant, they are fearless: Just look at those fierce eyes! The pictures are impressively confident. Zanele Muholi, her subjects, and her pictures stand up to threat and violence. Visibility changes awareness. These pictures visibly have the power to bring change.

Scott Schuman: The Sartorialist

It repeatedly occurred that some photography colleagues of mine used my computer, and inevitably, after looking around my internet browser for a while, noticed that I have the Sartorialist blog as a bookmark. Enter the patronising look and the saucy undertone: "The Sartorialist, eh...?" With just a few words, they make clear what they think: Scott Schuman's street fashion photography is unworthy. In their eyes this little cretin of a blog by a rich guy who shoots whoever he wants and still is not more than a puppet of the devouring fashion industry, shouldn't be anywhere near an aspiring young documentary photographer's bookmarks.
But give me, and him, a break, people!
Sure, that blog is a bit of weird place. Schuman seems to be one of the privileged people who has unlimited access to fashion shows, expensive shops, and industry connections. Yes, he is one of those who think that a jacket for $149 is "cheap". Given the popularity of his blog, he is certainly one of the main players in fashion when it comes to dictating taste and trends. He rolls along with the rich, splendid and spoiled - not everybody's cup of tea.

But when it comes down to his pictures, it is a different thing. The pictures on his blog are nice, simple as that. They look good. They have nice colours, good lighting, interesting framing and setting. You cannot deny that Schuman is a talented photographer, and he's got a good eye. Also, most important to me, he is very open in what he photographs. He doesn't go for one type of people, he is interested in many different styles and self expressions. Therefore, you can sometimes find a "gem" on his blog: A character who captures you, who makes you look twice. It is a wonderful resource when I'm on my regular hunt for gender expressions in photography - because there are these androgynous, playful subjects, and Schuman snaps them so well.
So don't judge me on my bookmarks. You never know what you'll find.

All images by Scott Schuman, found on The Sartorialist.

Genderbending: JJ Levine, Hana Pesut, and Ali Mahdavi

JJ Levine: Alone Time 7

Lately I've come across quite a few projects that interestingly play with gender and the performance of it. Performance in connection to gender is, in a way, a pet subject of mine, because I believe that traditional gender roles can be easily challenged by body posture, clothing, make-up. We can be what we want to be, and many people actually choose not to confirm to social expectations but express their gender identity in complex ways - legible from their appearance and their performance.

JJ Levine's Alone Time features one model performing both male and female in the same frame. According to Levine, a queer and trans artist, the work is immensely personal and draws from own experience as much as from the queer community in Montreal. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Levine said: "I want to convince the viewer of the many possibilities that may exist within a single surface perception or presentation. Ultimately, I aim to destabilise the notion of gender as singular and predestined by the sex we are assigned at birth." The project is effectively breaking up the notion of the binary gender, the boxes we are often assigned to  - it acknowledges the fact that there is a wide spectrum between male and female for every individual to explore, and it makes you stop, look closer, and think.

Less political, but nevertheless interesting is the Switcharoo project by Levine's fellow Canadian Hana Pesut. She made couples swap their clothes, and photographed them in each outfit.

Hana Pesut: Switcharoo

It is a easy going, fun project and very successful in its simplicity. In an online interview Pesut stated:"Now it seems that almost anything goes. And in fashion now there are men modeling women's clothes and women modeling men's clothes." It shows that gender is not a dead-serious subject - you're welcome to play, to express yourself.

She's right about the development in fashion. My last example is a picture from Ali Mahdavi's editorial Body Double series in which he worked with the androgynous model Andrej Pejic. It works on the same principles as Levine's pictures, although it is much more stylised. Fashion is arguably one of the biggest influences of our time. So, maybe, if fashion has realised by now how easy it is to be whatever you want, if fashion enables us to perform... why don't we just go for it? 

Ali Mahdavi: Body Double

Brassaï, Lulu and the punctum

Lulu, at Le Monocle, c. 1932

The picture above was taken by the Hungarian photographer Brassaï in an underground club in Paris in the 1930s. I came across it earlier while researching black and white night photography, and in a seminar today we've had quite an interesting discussion about it.

We talked about Lulu when we discussed Roland Barthes' theory of the punctum. The punctum, according to Barthes, is - very roughly and generally - the one element in a picture that sparks your interest and, more importantly, an emotional response; it's the one bit that really hooks you to the picture. The punctum can be a very personal thing, e.g. if you have a habit of drinking Lanson Brut champagne, the bottle in the picture above might be the one thing you will respond to immediately.

Now, what I realised today is that not only is the punctum a personal matter and your emotional response might be different from someone else's, but it can also influence your interpretation of a picture majorly. Maybe it was because I am dealing with gender in photography on a daily basis, but when I saw the picture for the first time I wasn't too fussed with the fact that Lulu presents herself in a really masculine way. My punctum was her eyes: the quite sad, introvert look into the distance. This picture makes me feel loneliness in the first place - particularly when you take the sole place setting, the single glass, the unshared bottle of champagne into consideration, too. 

However, my seminar group disagreed with me on that point. Someone took the eyes as a punctum as well, but connected their longing gaze then to Lulu's masculine appearance and the scenery of an Parisian lesbian underground club, and said that the picture was talking about sexual desire and frustration. Someone else was drawn to the mural behind Lulu - which is unfortunately not visible in this slightly cropped version, but the original version shows a part of it, and you can see female legs and high heels. All of the sudden the contrast between the female characteristics in the painting and Lulu's appearance made the picture tell of gender difference, gender expression, self identity - a pretty superficial, but nevertheless valid point, in my eyes.

I think it's pretty cool how details can change the perception of a single picture in completely opposite directions. Also I like the way it shows how personal experience feeds into your interpretation - if I wasn't used so much to seeing crossdressers and drag and genderbending, maybe my initial response wouldn't have gone beyond the gender tension in Brassaï's picture, either.

Christer Strömholm: Les Amies De Place Blanche

Jacky, place Blanche 1961

"This is a book about the quest for self-identity, about the right to live, about the right to own and control one's own body.

(...)

These are images of women - biologically born as men - that we call 'transsexuals'.

As for me, I call them 'my friends of place Blanche'. This friendship started here, in the early 60s and it still continues."

Christer Strömholm, 1983

I could have titled this blog post: "Why Les Amies De Place Blanche is my favourite photo book in the world", or "Why I am completely in love with Christer Strömholm's photos". But no - let's keep up at least the weak pretence of neutrality, shall we?
(This mere semblence of an unbiased photo book review won't last for longer than a few lines, I fear. I'm way too much in awe.)

Published in 1983, Les Amies De Place Blanche regained quite a bit of attention lately when the popular website BuzzFeed picked it up and the photos subsequently circulated on Facebook and Twitter. The book has been on my bookshelve for a while by then, and it was a lovely surprise to see the new attention to it.
The pictures are Strömholm's record of his time in Paris, when he lived in the red light district of Pigalle and became close friends with many of the trans women - some post-op, some pre-op -, the so-called 'nightbirds' who mainly earned their money by prostitution. The Swedish photographer and the girls lived on the same floor of a cheap hotel, and shared their lives in the night.

"Often, around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I heard knocking on the wall of my room. It was Cobra, telling me coffee was ready. We had coffee with milk in her room on the 5th floor of the hotel Chappe. There were breadcrumbs in bed. We had been sleeping since dawn and it would soon be dark."

Nana, 1959

It is a lovely book, the 2011 edition printed extraordinarily well by Dewi Lewis. The pictures are of astonishing quality - beautifully lit and framed, great portraits and observed moments. But it is not the quality alone that makes the book outstanding to me. It is the story that the pictures tell.
Unlike many other projects (particularly from the last ten years, surprisingly) the subjects in Les Amies De Place Blanche are not treated as outcasts, as curious struggling individuals defined by their fleeting gender alone. They are not exploited, not photographed solely for the sake of the spectacle or a political agenda. The pictures tell the story - the title gives it away - of a deep and lasting friendship in the first place; the gender plays only a secondary role. In the 2011 book, you'll find a short introduction to all the girls and their stories, the so-called 'family album', and the personal accounts of Nana and Jacky, two of Strömholm's closest friends and favourite subjects.

Gina & Nana, place Blanche 1963

The girls in these pictures have dignity, and Strömholm treats them with respect - and because he is so close to them, he is able to look behind the facade. Just look at Jacky's upbeat personality that punches you through the frame, or Nana's subtle sadness. I feel that the trust the girls had in the photographer is tangible. A few of the pictures are snapshots of the girls joking around in their rooms, or meeting their boyfriends. Anybody could be in these pictures - I think its great that neither Christer Strömholm nor the 'nightbirds' let themselves be reduced to photographing/being trans. It is a message to all of us (attention, pathos!): Trans people are having lives that go beyond their gender, they enjoy life as much as others, they don't want to be pitied all the time. Meet them, talk to them, get to know them. Les Amies De Place Blanche serves a splendid example of how portraits are made with respectfulness and love. Given the fact that the project was made in the 1950s and 60s, it is a shame that not many photographers seem to have learned from it since.

Christer avec Panama, 1968

All pictures by Christer Strömholm.

Lindsay Morris: You Are You

(Click to enlarge.)

The first proper blog post is always the hardest, or so they say. So many things to write about, where would you start... I decided to present to you one of my favourite projects of the past few months, Lindsay Morris' You Are You.

You Are You is about with a summer camp for non-gender-conforming boys in the US. There, far away from their kindergartens and schools, from bullying and oppression, the boys can wear dresses, put on make-up and "be themselves" in the sheltered environment of their families and nature. Morris documented the camp over the course of three years and took a number of lovely images, floating dresses, kids on an improvised runway, and a lot of bright pink included. 

The pictures have been included prominently in an excellent article in the New York Times magazine, titled What's So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?. The title already points out: You Are You is not necessarily about transgender children - after all, before puberty gender and sexuality are hardly set in stone. It's more about the fluidity of gender, the courage of some children and their parents not to conform to society's ideas of male and female - and to what these binary opposites are characterised by. You Are You is a fantasy, the utopia of a world in which little boys aren't harassed for heart-shaped necklaces and pink dresses, in which being queer is being accepted, in which, maybe, gender doesn't matter any longer.

Of course, Morris' project is terribly romantic, almost corny - look at that light, the warm colours, that touch of princess life in the waving rose tulle - but then, why shouldn't it be? There are enough bleak, depressing stories about LGBT youth out there, even the most positive of them with that ever so subtle hint of sadness, with a sense of not-belonging. Morris herself states on Slate's Photo Blog: "I'm saying this is a new story. This is not a tragedy." In its own special way, the romanticism is beautiful - just like the depicted kids.

Morris' project inadvertently addresses another, old problem - the whole gender bending only ever catches attention when it is boys dressing as girls. Why do we need a special summer camp for boys who like dresses but none for girls who like cars? Why are drag queens all over the media, but no drag kings? I'd love to see a good photo project on women dressing as men but alas, I haven't found one yet. And hell yes, I wish the world would be a bit more like in Lindsay Morris' summer camp. I'll keep dreaming, looking at her pictures again and again.

All pictures by Lindsay Morris