simulation
2016
With this project I revisited a photographic series that I created almost ten years ago, in order to explore what new meanings or outcomes would be generated from a reengagement at this point in time. In that first series, created relatively early in my gender/body/ social transition, I restaged childhood snapshots of myself, exploring what it meant to deviate from the medically pathologized script of what a trans person’s history/childhood looked like, and also what my own relationship to those photographs was.
Part of the medical process of transitioning (as it was ten years ago in Canada; it is slowly changing) requires that a trans person conform to a certain “script” regarding childhood experience and feelings about their body. The accepted story “I am a (girl/boy) trapped in a (boy/girl)’s body” was/is the prerequisite for access to medical resources, as was/is a disassociation with things deemed traditionally masculine or feminine, i.e., dresses, ballet, dolls, etc., or trucks, sports, etc. For those who don’t live that binary experience or believe in those dichotomies, this means that their histories must be reformulated (i.e. lied about) in order to access medical aid/support.
The original project was made partly in response to this situation, a few years into my social transition, but before I undertook any physical transition, and as I was in the process of applying for medical permission to transition. At that time, I wanted to reclaim my own childhood and ownership of my gender/body/image, even though I did feel disassociated with it in various ways. I also wanted to complicate and subvert the medical regulation of gender, which disallowed such states of being as feminine masculinity, and thus created a condition of invisibility for people who identify as such. Additionally, I wanted to express my discomfort with my body at that moment, and to document the process of change that I was in. I did this by restaging a number of photographs, in most of which I present a femme/feminine gender expression. In several of these, also, I am wearing costumes, which I loved as a child, and which speaks to the notion of “trying on” identities/gender expressions/personas, which we all do so fluidly as children.
The effect of the restaging in the original project is an eerie consonance and an uncanny dissonance. The forceful re-fitting of my body into those clothes and studied poses conveys my discomfort, but also creates a loop back and forth in time, flattening it out in a way that speaks to the other driving factor for this project. In the process of transition, parents/friends/family also have to go through a transition, in how they conceive of the person undergoing transition. A suggested part of this process is to mourn the loss of the daughter/son/brother/sister/etc. they thought they had, as though that person had actually died, so that they can make space for a new (uncomplicated?) conception of who that person is. As a subject of this mourning, I find it extremely disturbing, alienating, and challenging, as it reinforces the idea of a dichotomy where one person cannot be both masculine and feminine, and also disassociates a person further from their own childhood and the continuity of their identity; it enforces a split between future and past self, casting the “former” self and the current/future self as two different people.
In this new reengagement I restaged the images yet again, in an abstracted way, as a reiterative but problematic statement that “I am still here/I am not an image.” I say problematic because any snapshot/photograph is just that; a sliver of an abstracted moment in time; a flat object, extremely limited in defining anything about a person’s identity, but also used as documentary “proof” of existence. And so I employ the images here in a way that recognizes both that they are me, and they are not me. A strange harmony and a simultaneous tension emerge in the new layered images. The restaging undermines the originals’ validity as documents, while concurrently elevating the status of those particular, insignificant images to the iconic—and yet the obstruction created by layering again subverts iconic status, creating an unresolved loop that speaks to the ever-changing, unstable, and open nature of identity.
2016
With this project I revisited a photographic series that I created almost ten years ago, in order to explore what new meanings or outcomes would be generated from a reengagement at this point in time. In that first series, created relatively early in my gender/body/ social transition, I restaged childhood snapshots of myself, exploring what it meant to deviate from the medically pathologized script of what a trans person’s history/childhood looked like, and also what my own relationship to those photographs was.
Part of the medical process of transitioning (as it was ten years ago in Canada; it is slowly changing) requires that a trans person conform to a certain “script” regarding childhood experience and feelings about their body. The accepted story “I am a (girl/boy) trapped in a (boy/girl)’s body” was/is the prerequisite for access to medical resources, as was/is a disassociation with things deemed traditionally masculine or feminine, i.e., dresses, ballet, dolls, etc., or trucks, sports, etc. For those who don’t live that binary experience or believe in those dichotomies, this means that their histories must be reformulated (i.e. lied about) in order to access medical aid/support.
The original project was made partly in response to this situation, a few years into my social transition, but before I undertook any physical transition, and as I was in the process of applying for medical permission to transition. At that time, I wanted to reclaim my own childhood and ownership of my gender/body/image, even though I did feel disassociated with it in various ways. I also wanted to complicate and subvert the medical regulation of gender, which disallowed such states of being as feminine masculinity, and thus created a condition of invisibility for people who identify as such. Additionally, I wanted to express my discomfort with my body at that moment, and to document the process of change that I was in. I did this by restaging a number of photographs, in most of which I present a femme/feminine gender expression. In several of these, also, I am wearing costumes, which I loved as a child, and which speaks to the notion of “trying on” identities/gender expressions/personas, which we all do so fluidly as children.
The effect of the restaging in the original project is an eerie consonance and an uncanny dissonance. The forceful re-fitting of my body into those clothes and studied poses conveys my discomfort, but also creates a loop back and forth in time, flattening it out in a way that speaks to the other driving factor for this project. In the process of transition, parents/friends/family also have to go through a transition, in how they conceive of the person undergoing transition. A suggested part of this process is to mourn the loss of the daughter/son/brother/sister/etc. they thought they had, as though that person had actually died, so that they can make space for a new (uncomplicated?) conception of who that person is. As a subject of this mourning, I find it extremely disturbing, alienating, and challenging, as it reinforces the idea of a dichotomy where one person cannot be both masculine and feminine, and also disassociates a person further from their own childhood and the continuity of their identity; it enforces a split between future and past self, casting the “former” self and the current/future self as two different people.
In this new reengagement I restaged the images yet again, in an abstracted way, as a reiterative but problematic statement that “I am still here/I am not an image.” I say problematic because any snapshot/photograph is just that; a sliver of an abstracted moment in time; a flat object, extremely limited in defining anything about a person’s identity, but also used as documentary “proof” of existence. And so I employ the images here in a way that recognizes both that they are me, and they are not me. A strange harmony and a simultaneous tension emerge in the new layered images. The restaging undermines the originals’ validity as documents, while concurrently elevating the status of those particular, insignificant images to the iconic—and yet the obstruction created by layering again subverts iconic status, creating an unresolved loop that speaks to the ever-changing, unstable, and open nature of identity.