Transformation
Summary: This photo series is on a select group of individuals who have questioned their basic identity and have fearlessly displayed it to the world.
We take form on earth through the individuals that bear us. They teach us the ways of the world as we grow up. They provide for us until we have the ability to handle our personal project, our life. As a child we take in all the information that comes our way, it is the best period in our life because of our ability to imbibe. But there comes a point when our intellect starts taking shape. Some continue to exist in the fundamentals, some find work around strategies but the blessed ones decide to shake things up and transform into a product of their intellect while looking for an identity.
Synesthesia is a condition wherein the brain tricks you; colors become audible, sounds trigger olfaction, taste and vision lose boundaries. While this is intriguing, it is a condition that I cannot fathom. The subjects of this project have a similar crisis; they are caught up in a gender dilemma. But instead of dwelling in this perceived anomaly, they have embraced and given it a creative and productive direction in the form of entertainment, education and inspiration to a receptive audience.
To succeed in such a mission, an advanced and woke society is also imperative otherwise the message is only going to fall on deaf ears. Their effort is therefore a reflection of the times we are living in, a testimony to the work that their predecessors toiled for.
Costumes, wigs, make up and role-play are an integral part of their new identity. It is not an effort undertaken to hide anything or to be useful, in fact it’s just their urge to be free from the submissive views of the society about their existential choice. To quote Simone de Beauvoir from her essay The Ethics of Ambiguity “Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word "useful" an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free.”
As a photographer, I found it my duty to tell their stories. Each portrait of the characters they portray, is the final product of the daily tug of war that they go through, to make peace with the effort that takes to be out in the open, express who they truly are and be free from general ways of existing.
