Autonomy and representation: the transgender self in photography

Autonomy and representation: The transgender self in photography

originally published in:
Agency and Aesthetics
Artmatter 02
Auckland Art Gallery
2018

Photography is expected to record the world ‘truthfully’. But, exploiting its reputation for truthfulness, photography actually fabricates certain images of women and men, enforcing these while discrediting others.[1]

The New Zealand Human Rights Commission’s Inquiry into Discrimination Experienced by Transgender People delineates many transgender people’s experiences to include prejudice, lack of access to medical treatment, high rates of suicide, ostracism and abuse.[2] Although we occupy a moment in which transgender people have increased cultural viability, and the non-cisgender body[3] is hyper-visible in the news, and online, the question remains: Has our perception as a society changed accordingly? Within photography, transgender people have been largely absent, excluded, or otherwise subject to a medical or fetishising gaze, which is yet another categorisation of the body of the ‘Other’.

The visual image has immense power to validate or negate an individual’s perception of self and identity, particularly where one alters their body in accordance with their gender. Hence, autonomy over the creation of an image of self is so crucial. In this essay, I examine how consent has been important in the photography of artist Rebecca Swan and compare it to alternative models used by artists Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst. I will also consider the sharing of transgender, transformative selfies through online platforms.

The Human Rights Commission defines ‘transgender’ as ‘a person whose gender identity is different from their physical sex at birth’.[4] I use its broader definition as encompassing of all non-cisgender identities, including, but not limited to, genderqueer, non-binary, gender neutral, androgynous, takatāpui (Māori specific queer identity, now used more broadly to denote gender identity), and fa‘afafine (a Samoan specific gender identity, with variants found in other Moana cultures). This very flexibility can be seen as a counter to cis-normative restrictions and limitations.[5] I myself am non-binary, and this emic perspective informs my research because I know the difficulties experienced when operating outside normative gender constructions, and I have observed the denial of rights and the violence that people within my trans community have experienced. 

While on one hand transgender individuals determine how and by which means they transition (if they wish to medically transition), their autonomy remains limited. New Zealand implements the informed consent approach to hormone therapy and despite the lack of access to funded gender-affirming surgeries, more New Zealanders are paying their own costs to access surgery overseas to shape their body to be more congruent with their identity.[6] However, one’s self-determined gender identity, and the assertion of this identity as divergent from their gender assigned at birth, is considered medically insufficient as a basis for transition, and identity must still be validated at each step from medical professionals prior to accessing treatment.

Judith Butler argues that gender is inherently performative and is always about unattainable becoming rather than being.[7] She defines gender as a continual construction of the self, consciously and unconsciously. However, for many transgender people it is difficult to extricate this concept from the dysfunctional experience of the unchanged body. Although gender is experienced, constructed, formulated or rejected psychologically, it is difficult to sustain if not grounded in the physical. As Jack Halberstam notes, one is not necessarily guaranteed freedom from the distress of bodily limitations or gender norms ‘by understanding how they work’.[8]

Medical transitioning is considered contentious by some, as it enables transgender individuals to visibly disappear, seemingly upholding the status quo by reasserting binary genders.[9] Bernice Hausman argues that the autonomy of transsexual people choosing to alter their bodies only demonstrates ‘that their relationship to technology is a dependent one’.[10] Halberstam, however, acknowledges the power of autonomy over bodily alteration as a means to affirm gender identity.[11]

The construction of an image of the self can grant agency. Photography has the potential to alleviate gender dysphoria (that is, the psychological distress at one’s own body) through the control it allows over appearances. Photography is inseparable from the politics of power, in terms of who has the power of selection, what is seen and what is omitted. The image is a way of cementing and consolidating bodily transformation, and at once records and validates a projection of the desired self.

Assume Nothing is a series of photographs and a publication by Auckland artist Rebecca Swan, produced between 1995 and 2003. It comprised images of gender-diverse individuals, clothed and unclothed, accompanied by their quotes. The individuals are captured with exceptional tenderness and intimacy. Her series explores the tension between personality, gender identity and the physical conditions of the body.

The photographs capture the effects of hormone therapy and gender-affirmation surgeries; the models are caught in both being and becoming.  Almost all the photos omit the models’ genitals, effectively short-circuiting the viewer’s ingrained conditioning to assign each subject a gender based on birth sex. The images convey the predicament transgender people face – their bodies are policed and scrutinised by viewers seeking conclusive signs of maleness or femaleness in the cis-normative practice of reinforcing binary gendering. The images resist and undermine the attitudes that sabotage a transgender individual’s identity through refusing definitive gender markers, and refusing to pander to this cisgender expectation of sex to be overt and available for their own knowledge.

In works made after 1998, Swan elevates her model’s experiences and opinions in the texts that run alongside her photographs. There is an awareness of the limitations of the visual image, and concern to grant the models a level of articulate agency. In Assume Nothing, Swan demonstrates a radical model of continuous consent. Common practice in photography is for a model to sign a release form or agree via verbal consent, after which the photographer can freely publish images of them. Instead, Swan seeks consent from her models each time the works are re-exhibited or published. Here, she relinquishes the hierarchy of photographer and model, in favour of a continuous dialogue with her subjects. She follows an empathetic approach, utilising a methodology in which consent is never assumed.

Swan’s image of the celebrity Carmen (fig 1) creates a strong portrait of a woman who describes herself confidently as a transsexual, drag queen, female impersonator, and performer. In the text which accompanies this work, Carmen discusses her experience as a trans Māori woman working in the sex industry: at that time ‘there were thirteen or fourteen drag queen prostitutes and I’m the only one still alive’.[12] Mani, an intersex person Swan also photographed, also articulates herm own experience as a child subjected to ‘gender corrective’ surgery without herm knowledge or consent.[13] ‘Who’s body is this [sic]’ was scratched over the image by Mani, who assisted in the creation of this work. This infliction of linguistic violence onto the photo becomes a statement of anger about this denial of rights, and emphasises the traumatic treatment Mani received, while signalling a wider prejudice against intersex people. The inclusion of Mani’s statement, in herm own hand, allows Mani to exercise herm own autonomy.

Swan’s concern for consent also allows the sitter to confirm ongoing identification with the image. Some individuals have furthered their medical transition since the images were taken. Swan’s continuous consent model did not justify the intimate shots; instead, the consent framework allowed for and invited the level of vulnerability that the models were willing and comfortable to share. These works continuously validate autonomous identity, creating a space where trans individuals have their own choice respected as to how they are represented.

By comparison to Swan, the model of autonomy demonstrated by transgender artists Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst in the series and subsequent photobook Relationship, is highly intimate and reciprocal in nature, as each act as both photographer and model. Ernst and Drucker were in a relationship for six years (2008–2014), throughout which they transitioned in parallel; Drucker from male to female, and Ernst from female to male. Relationship was a result. Stumbled across by Stuart Comer in a ‘what’s in that box’ moment, the series was subsequently included in the Whitney Biennial 2014 and published as a photobook.[14]

The images were not originally intended to be shown to the public. They were considered by the couple as love-gifts to each other, and separate from their professional artistic practice. The decision to make the images public came later, after their relationship had ended. The consent over the body is, hence, the consent between two lovers taking and sharing images of each other; and later deciding together to make them public. There are few photographs of transgender individuals taken by transgender photographers. The majority of content featuring trans people, characters or issues in TV shows, films and art exhibitions are created by cisgender people for a mainstream or commercial cisgender audience.

There is a certain soft self-consciousness in the images, an awareness of each artist’s dysphoria and the implications of photographing each other, an understanding of which areas of each other’s body to emphasise, which not to focus on and so on. Both are in control of how they wanted to be seen and identified. There are a few tongue-in-cheek, playful images – like Ernst lying with two chicken eggs propped between his thighs, or Drucker overlaying a peeled red grapefruit over her lap. Overall, the overarching subject is their love for each other.

In the foreword to the photobook, Comer stated, ‘The photographs are exquisite, surprising and efficient in dissolving so many of the structures of fear that still allow gender to be policed so stringently.’ These are images of a couple defining themselves together and as individuals, intimately longing, dreaming, being – the tender lover’s gaze potentially transcending their trans-ness.

In contrast to initially private context for Drucker and Ernst’s images is the current subcultural phenomenon of transgender selfies proliferating publicly and anonymously through the internet. These photos follow the before and after formula, often comprising a comparison of two or more shots of bodily transformation. This particular genre of selfies is located on photo-sharing platforms like Instagram and Tumblr, and also on reddit, Facebook and so on. Acts of self-determination, these selfies, form a growing basis of visual public knowledge of gender diversity and hormonal and surgical transitions.

The first recorded public instance of transgender ‘before and after’ photographs was published in 1937, after early gender-affirmation surgery, in an article titled quite simply ‘Can sex be changed in humans?’[15] Today’s self-expressive mode of documenting one’s transition is, however, distinctly different due to the instantaneousness and the proliferation of selfies. The snap-second summary an image provides is more ubiquitous than discussions on the social, mental and emotional realities of transition.

Most trans selfies are a conscious construction but nevertheless grant people a sense of control over their gender identity while validating appearance. The recording of the ongoing transition is an extension of…and documentation of taking control. In this sense, these can be empowering images, temporal milestones marking post-surgery or hormone treatment and the resulting changes. The images cement and visibly stabilise often complex, fluid and multi-faceted changes. These photos replicate and reinforce the genre of ‘compare and contrast’ photography, the dichotomy of a ‘before’ and therefore, an ‘after’, further replicating problematic cisnormative assumptions.

But that is the catch – in portraying the difference between point A and point B, these photos can also be seen to reiterate the myth of homogenous transformation or ‘full transition’ as a necessity for transgender identity. We are presented with an ocularcentric summation of transition, not as social or personal, but as a reliance on the physical and how well someone may or may not ‘pass’ – the controversial term, that is, be mistaken for a cisgender person. The well-intentioned, but nevertheless caustic remark, ‘they look so good that they look like the real thing’.

The failure of this genre of selfie is that it does not encapsulate the emotions of the individual and their own journey. It is centred on a determined finishing point and elevates hormonal and surgical transition. It makes trans identity visible, yet also effaces those who do not pass or are unable to physically transition. In Bodies that Matter, Butler states that through the action of becoming a gender, one becomes a subject.[16] It is difficult to exist as outside that binary opposition; one must be recognised and categorised in accordance with binary genders in order to become a ‘one’, or a viable subject, in the first place. The very images which celebrate trans progress are also a limitation on acceptance.

Andre Lepecki, in discussing the trend of the selfie, states ‘the selfie is granted endless opportunities, but not necessarily the rights, of expression’.[17] An image grants agency of expression, but to what degree do these photos give the ability to articulately express identity, and what do they prevent expression of? Transitioning is incredibly important for many people, and the act of documentation grants autonomy and comes with a sense of pride and joy. Yet the risk in this kind of photo documentation is that the greater appearance of congruence with a gender identity, the more an individual is acknowledged to participate in a cissexist, transphobic society. The photographic formula of before and after, while a celebration of autonomy, often reiterates binary genders as the desirable norm.

As we have seen, photography can be a visual weapon of validation of transgender self-perception and it grants a certain degree of control over appearance. It enables control not just over one’s presentation, but one’s representation. Photography offers trans gender individuals greater visibility, greater autonomy and ease of presenting ourselves and the changes we experience. Through selfies and photography, we have freedom and agency in our representations of ourselves, and more frequently, our concepts and beliefs are respected in the portrayal of our bodies by others.

Individual agency is granted by photography, yet it is actually affecting collective freedom. I would question whether these pixels, these small freedoms, equate to freedom itself, as the absolute control over a momentary image is only a semblance of freedom, rather than the reality of being read or recognized in public. We must consider how photography’s seemingly authentic ability to record can be used not to define a subject’s body and gender, but instead to dematerialise definitive boundaries. Stuart Mckenzie, in the epigraph pinpoints this distinction between an individual image, and the effect of trends that extend over multiple images have on our collective consciousness. The bodies of work evidenced in the photographs by Swan, Drucker and Ernst instead provide a compelling alternative to the superficial – but far too prevalent – binary lens.

[1] Stuart A McKenzie, Rising to the Blow, Eyework Design, Wellington, 1992.

[2] Human Rights Commission New Zealand, ‘To Be Who I Am / Kia noho au ki toku ano ao Report: The Inquiry into Discrimination Experienced by Transgender People’, last modified Nov 2008, www.hrc.co.nz/files/8214/2378/7655/24-Nov-2008_11-36-56_To_Be_Who_I_Am_HTML_Aug_08.html, accessed 5 Jan 2017.

[3] By cisgender I mean those who identify with their assigned at birth sex – for example, someone assigned at birth male who identifies as a man.

[4] Human Rights Commission New Zealand, ‘Trans Terminology’, www.hrc.co.nz/files/9914/2378/4830/HRC_H_Trans_Terminology.pdf, accessed 10 Jan 2017.

[5] National Center for Transgender Equality, ‘Transgender Terminology,’ last modified 15 Jan 2014, www.transequality.org/issues/resources/transgender-terminology, accessed 25 Sep 2016.

[6] Although this is 

[7] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York, 1999.

[8] Jack Halberstam, ‘Gender Flex’ in Rebecca Swan, Assume Nothing, Boy Tiger Press, Auckland, 2004, p 24.

[9] ‘Transgender Oppression Definitions’ in Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell and Pat Griffin (eds) Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Routledge, New York, 2007, http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415892940/data/3%20Transgender%20Oppression%20Definitions.pdf, accessed 20 Sep 2016.

[10] Bernice Hausman, quoted in Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity, Duke University Press, Durham, 1998, p 160.

[11] Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

[12] Carmen, quoted in Swan, p 75.

[13] Mani’s pronoun is ‘herm’, which recognises Mani’s identity as an intersex individual (formerly termed hermaphrodite).

[14] Stuart Comer, ‘Foreword’ in Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, Relationship, Prestel, New York, 2016.

[15]Donald Furthman Wickets, ‘Can Sex in Humans be Changed?’, Physical Culture, Jan 1937, pp 16–17, 83–5.

[16] Butler, Judith, Bodies that Matter, Routledge, New York, 1993.

[17] André Lepecki, ‘Under Attack (or Expression in the Age of Selfie Control)’, L'Internationale Online, 25 Apr 2015.