Imaging their Subjectivity :
Transsexuals and Photo graphy
Siddharth Sivakumar

After dealing with trans-sexuality from a diachronic
perspective, in her Alice at Frederick’s of Hollywood, Mariette
situates trans-sexuality in a synchronic time-frame. The
image has captured the three representatives of humanity with
a spontaneous click of the camera. Man is represented by the
larger-than-life Oscar erect on his pedestal, while the pretty
lady in her pearly white gown is an inanimate show-piece
representing Woman, the middle aged trans-woman, staring at
them with admiration, is the representative of trans-sexuality.
It is interesting to note how they are not standing on the same
plane, but, as if, on a podium according to their ranks. And
it comes as no surprise that man is given precedence; he
occupies the top spot in the social hierarchy followed by the
woman and the transsexual respectively. The trans-woman is
no doubt happy to be found in the august company, as she
looks up to them from the dream-like setting of Frederick’s of
Hollywood, the famous retailer of women’s lingerie. Although
the image is crafted with bright stars, glittering walls, lights,
and reflections blend with fantasy, the irony of the situation
cannot be missed – low-key Alice happens to be the only real
person amidst heightened artificial realities!
Del LaGrace Volcane, at the age of 55, wields his art against
the binary of male and female — the rampant misconception.
Volcane’s portraits of persons, bodies, genders and sexualities,
contextualising it to the modern issues and dilemmas, where
the numerous surgeries are viable and hormone therapies
are common. Nina, who was born a little girl caught in the
body of a little boy, had over 60 surgeries to become the
lovely woman that she is now. The amount of plastic that has
gone into making the new Nina is often the subject of her
performances. She transforms herself from this to that, and
then to the other. She recognizes the artificiality of her body,
as she time and again puts it alongside inanimate life-sized
dolls, which bear a remarkable resemblance to her. But at
the same time, these images also emphasize on the need to
construct the artificial body in-order to house her real self.
Looking at her performances, even when it is not live but
captured in photographs, we are reminded of the Englandbased
graffiti artist and political activist Banksy’s words, “Art
should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
Today with various trans-beauty pageants and dragqueens
gaining popularity, there prevails a greater sense of
gender fluidity. But still a transsexual teenager out with family
for a picnic, wonders standing before the restroom, whether
to enter the one with the king’s picture or the one bearing
the queen’s. Naturally he may be expected to follow his male
cousins who casually step into the restroom, but his instincts
require him to enter the girl’s loo accompanied by his female
cousins. A transsexual child grows up with numerous conflicts.
In photographs such mental ruptures caused by the multiple
sexual identities end-up being an intriguing visual spectacle
– an image of objective correlative. But how we see them in
pits the claims and clas¬sification of the hetero-nor¬mative
gender binaries against an extensive and plausible multiplicity
of genders, and sexualities manifested in the enigmatic
bodies. What a normal heterosexual man may label as “selfobsession”
may very well be a question of “self-expression”.
Volcane’s words carry the meaning his photographs convey
through visuals – “Consider intersex bodies. Consider my
body. A body that has chosen to amplify rather than erase
its inter-sex-i-ness. A body that is unwilling and unable to
conform to claustrophobic cultural definitions of female or
male. A body that puts itself on the line to be judged by you.”
In Liminality (2004), he has photographed himself caged
within a glass-wall. This is how he puts ‘his body’ on display.
But the greasy hands, and the impression of his body, which
is pressed against the glass, make his appearance obscure.
Effectively bodies and their boundaries are blurred in the
liminal space of his transmuted being.