I Am Somebody
You are who you pretend to be. – Oscar Wild Why were you shooting drag queens? “They were the most beautiful creatures I’d ever seen. I was immediately infatuated. They became my whole world.” – Nan Goldin, The Other Side
The project will document and witness the new young generation of drag queens in New York and the way they deal with relationships, society, gender identity issues and their dreams whether they are personal or socially concerned (HIV, wedding equality).
In October 2010, I was following an assignment and I visited my first Drag Queens show. I was curious but uneasy. I anticipated finding an extravagant extreme environment in which easy sex was dominant.
Following the sensual and exciting visual of that environment I kept going there for 2 months without any particular goal. Spontaneously, and remarkably, I was every day more interested not in the Drag Queen world in general, but in the people I was meeting. They were friendly and defensive at the same time with me. I was attracted by their body presenting both male and female characteristics, and by their transformation occurring every night.
Because of this I started calling them “my butterflies”: an insect that was born caterpillar and only through a change can become butterfly. How does it feel during this process? Would you say that the caterpillar is more honest than a butterfly? Would you blame the butterfly for this transformation?
I started interviewing a few of them at home and I found myself so similar to their struggle and their goal.
I recognized immediately that a family was standing in front of me.
Honey Davenport, while I was standing in her bathtub interviewing her, was talking to me about personal responsibility of creating our own box, how stereotypes are wrong, and how difficult but happy can be to become simply what you are creating what you want to be.
Along the way I met other few Drag Queens performing with the goal of changing people mind: supporting the HIV prevention and vaccine trial or wedding equality.
Following them I discovered how in the most modern city in the world, New York, 1324 constitutional rights are still denied to people that were born gay.
I’ve seen how Drag Queens are loved and hated at the same time inside the gay community itself. They are strongly criticized because they project a limited and harmful image of gay people in their involvement in equality rights rallies and gay prides. According to many, their extravagance impedes a broader social acceptance.
This project matters so much to me because it’s universal (there are gay individuals in the entire world despite their culture and their race), it’s extremely private because touch our identity and gender, and it’s a symbol of the freedom and respect society denies to most of the minority groups.
Many photography and video-documentary projects have been done already about Drag Queens but most of them are 20 years old and most of them lack of the complex merge between personal dreams, social integration and political commitment.
This doesn’t want to be a documentary about a specific parade or about gender issues or about performances. The goal of this project is to bring successfully the complexity of individuals carrying personal dreams and social values at the same time, is to show the public and private dimension of these individuals, their beauty and their imperfection and, as hard as it is, it’s too show the joyful and playful side of them linked to their socio-political responsibility.
Today I am actively supporting organizations demanding full equality for all queer people, and supporting HIV vaccine research.
I don’t consider the people I met along the way “Drag Queens” stereotypes but complex individuals with relationships and dreams: My project wants to be a deep investigation of this family trying to document their uniqueness, their relations with their family and with society as well.
At the same time I’m interested in bringing this family in socially accepted environments (like Central Park) under the direct sunlight as metaphor of the freedom they are looking for and they find mostly in the darkness of nightclubs.
The project will be developed in the following phases:
- Within June 2011: photographic essay, video-interviews about nightlife and private spaces with an insight of the socio-political activism and personal dreams.
- Within December 2011: a video-documentary, an enriched photographic essay with more space to the queer community in general (Drag Kings, Lady Boys) and a more articulated presentation of personal and political dreams.
- 2012: the project will move to document the same project in a country where the gay community is strongly discriminated.
