Growing up as a queer, gender non-conforming, trans person in the Hudson Valley in New York State in the 1980s and 1990s, I never encountered examples of queer and trans love. The only visual examples of queer and trans life I ever saw were a handful of troubling sensational depictions on daytime television and in films where queer and trans people were viewed via homophobic gazes and depicted as freakish, disgusting, and despised; the representations I saw painted queer and trans people as tortured, loners, outcasts and monsters, I thought queer and trans lives were impossible to live, let alone to be loved. It wasn't until I was a young adult living in Montreal, London, San Francisco, and Oakland that I saw diverse international, intergenerational communities of queer and trans people thriving; I found a variety of forms of love, queer and trans vitality, bountiful queer and trans creativity, countless forms of self-expression, and more.
I began falling in love with my partner, Libby, in San Francisco in 2006 and immediately began making pictures with her, about her, and about how I looked at her through the gaze of queer trans love—a gaze of tenderness, enamored with the subtleties of her every move, the way that light gently caresses her, and the goofy specificity and silly humor that we developed alongside our tenderness for one another. While my photographs explore the specifics of our relationship, I also think of the project as an essential document demonstrating that queer, trans love exists and can be ongoing.
Libby has a tattoo around her abdomen, a quote from bell hooks that reads, "Embrace a Love Ethic, allowing it to govern and inform the way you think and act." I borrowed this as the title for this ongoing project as it profoundly reflects the care and sensitivity at the heart of this work.
