How can gender be depicted without being limited to the portrayal of the human body? This question set my starting point to begin this ongoing series.

I examine both subject and inanimate object using a large format camera, a torch and long exposure times. By portraying the objects in a manner that I portray people, I’m suggesting a flat hierarchy of existence. The spotlight hinting at the foreign gaze which trans* people are often exposed to, exploring, invading, evaluating, judging. The arisen blurriness an allegory of the ambiguity and fluidity of gender.

By using a view camera which slows down the procedure and leaving traces of light in the images by walking around the protagonist, the process of image making becomes very intimate. And me, the photographer, becomes present. Yet there appears to be a certain distance in the pictures; the protagonists never face the camera, the objects seem to be floating in their own universe, notions of size and position become distorted. It’s contradictions like these that interest me about photography.

“Asterisk” functions as a sort of blank space. As the trans spectrum is so manifold and an umbrella term for so many different experiences of gender I want to acknowledge that this broad term could never be fully grasped. Transitioning doesn’t necessarily happen from a point A to a point B and I think identity in general is a very fragile concept.