This project was inspired by my friend and frequent collaborator Chella Man. Chella and I go to Parsons together, and throughout first and second semester I've seen her go through an incredible (ever-changing) journey through self discovery in terms of her gender expression, and gender identity. This journey, and Chella's ideas about gender are self evident in her work which features bold and expressive line drawings of androgynous figures paired with powerful lines of text like "please! don't be afraid to voice all of who you are" and "gender isn't real, but still fucks me up because the world nags to label me". Chella brought up the idea to work together on a project for VFILES that discussed gender, and I was so excited to be joining her again to be a part of her artistic process. For this project, 'Here and Genderqueer' I teamed up with Chella to continue her ongoing artistic exploration of gender identity. I photographed 5 gender queer youth, and Chella spoke with each of them about their journey through exploring and understanding their own gender identity. She overlaid the images I took with her drawings that she infused with quotes from the interviews she conducted.
