BRIAN SPIES

JUNE 4 - 25, 2021

An ongoing body of photographic works documenting the continued exploration of my identity as a gender non-conforming person living in a rural, conservative community, these photographs are a sort of diary of a language with which I am still beginning to express. Shot with a large format film camera (4×5) in studio settings that create a theatrical tableaux, these photographs explore the performative nature of self-presentation. This performance, although always present, is magnified in the lived experiences of queer individuals, like myself. Influenced in part by the writings of queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, this body of work is a sort of documentary record of the guerrilla theatre, that for people like myself, is our lives.