• By the age of five, I  began to realize that I did not fit into the socially constructed Gender Binary.  “Gender norms” were always complicated for me. The Gender Binary and its strict gender norms felt beyond constraining and foreign to me.

    As I became more aware of how uncomfortable I was, I began to act out against these constraints finding myself in the Principals office at the age of eleven for refusing to make a skirt in Home Economics.

    When the principal asked why I would not make a skirt, I replied that I had no use for a skirt and I wanted to go to the Industrial shop. I was told that I was a girl and only boys could go to the Industrial  Shop.

    My choice was to make a skirt or sit in the principals office. I chose to sit. 

    This Portrait project is a deeply personal journey for me.

  • “I love how gender exists so differently for kids, in that at certain points it doesn’t seem to exist at all. I’ve spent a lot of time working backwards to find that place of carelessness, of feeling unobserved.

    I have so many photos that my family loved, and looking at them I can remember just how uncomfortable and overwhelmed I felt in that moment, and how unfamiliar the person in the photo was.

    Costume played into things a lot, a huge portion of my photos being myself and my friends decked out in layers of clothes scrounged from our parents, making up stories where we played characters of any gender.”
    -Elliot

  • California-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joe Stevens is a third-generation professional musician in a long line of restless westward moving souls. He caught the songwriting bug at 15 and has been at it ever since. After starting out as a self-taught guitar player and songwriter, he received a Bachelor of Music from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA, and has been traveling with his music across the US and abroad. Between 2006 and 2012 Joe’s first band Coyote Grace released five well-loved albums and toured with the Indigo Girls, Melissa Ferrick, and Girlyman; sharing stages with Chris Pureka, Greensky Bluegrass, Reverend Payton’s Big Damn Band, and legends such as Cris Williamson and Lowen and Navarro.

  • Juli Vizza is an Emmy Award winning editor and producer with two decades of experience in both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking. Their films have premiered at Sundance, Berlin, and Tribeca and have aired on PBS, Showtime, and The History Channel, among others.

    They recently edited LET THE CANARY SING a biopic on the legend and icon, Cyndi Lauper, which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Festival. Their previous series, AND SHE COULD BE NEXT, premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on POV.

    Other recent credits include DREAMS OF DARAA, a feature documentary about a Syrian woman seeking justice for her murdered husband and safety for her three daughters; WORLDS OF URSULA K. LE GUIN a film about the groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy author which won five festival awards and was broadcast on American Masters. Juli also co-produced and edited XMAS WITHOUT CHINA (SXSW, PBS) and produced NINE TO NINETY (HotDocs, PBS, IDA Award Nominee).

    Juli was a recipient of the 2021 Sundance Adobe Mentorship Award, and has been a Sundance Producing Fellow, a Film Independent Producers Lab Fellow, and a Fledgling Fund Fellow. They are a member of the Alliance of Documentary Editors.

  • Keller’s work has appeared in The New York Times,The Nation, The Brooklyn Rail, Out, Out Traveler,The Provincetown Independent, Provincetown Arts, Parterre Box, and Early Music America. 

    Raised on Cape Cod, Keller holds a B.A. in music and art history from Harvard, and an M.M. in musicology from the University of Edinburgh. In the fall, they will be starting a Ph.D. in musicology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

    Currently Brooklyn-based, Keller writes the substack Poison Put to Sound, and is working on a book about the cello and the trans body. Their proudest achievement, however, is getting a driver’s license at the age of 24.

    For more information: (Saskia) Max(well) Keller

  • Tan Jazz Mont

    Tan on IG

    “I have been rolling my eyes at the dominant cultural landscape my entire life. I have felt excluded, dismissed, and confused. No more! Today I am proudly Latinx and queer. I don’t owe anyone an explanation of my culture, orientation, or gender, but I do so anyway because today I am prideful. My mere existence is a fuck you to anyone feeling uncomfortable over me or my Latinx and/or LGBTQIA+ community. I identify as he/him, which includes gender fluidity, basically, I fuck with gender, and have been doing so my whole life. And although I fall in love with the person, not the gender, I am mostly attracted to women, and I have caught the perfect one, my muse and beautiful wife, Andrea. Please join me and enjoy my playful imagery, regardless of medium, I actively queer my Americana, which comes in a variety of shades and colors.”

    Mont received their MFA from CGU ‘11. Their artworks celebrate the underdog. Mont’s absurdist environments allow for challenging stereotypes and creating counter-histories. Mont is currently a professor at MVC, MSJC, and SBVC. When Tania is not creating, they enjoy spending time with their wife, son, cat, and pig.

Portraits

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Gender binary | A system in which gender is constructed into two strict categories of male or female. Gender identity is expected to align with the sex assigned at birth and gender expressions and roles fit traditional expectations.

The Gender Continuum | is a concept that acknowledges that gender is not limited to the binary of male and female, but is instead a spectrum of many different identities.

Gender Identity | One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

Gender Dysphoria | Clinically significant distress caused when a person's assigned birth gender is not the same as the one with which they identify.

Transgender | An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. Being transgender does not imply any specific sexual orientation. Therefore, transgender people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.

Transitioning | A series of processes that some transgender people may undergo in order to live more fully as their true gender. This typically includes social transition, such as changing name and pronouns, medical transition, which may include hormone therapy or gender affirming surgeries, and legal transition, which may include changing legal name and sex on government identity documents. Transgender people may choose to undergo some, all or none of these processes.

Agender | (adj.) is not having a gender or a “lack of” a gender. Agender people see themselves as neither a man nor a woman, or both. They're gender-neutral and often are described as genderfree or genderless.

Non-binary | is used to describe people who feel their gender cannot be defined within the margins of gender binary.

Transmasc | Transmasculine (or transmasc) is a term used for those assigned female at birth (AFAB) and whose gender identity or expression (or both) is masculine but not necessarily male.

Gender Fluid | Gender Fluid individuals do not identify with one gender exclusively. Gender fluidity refers to change over time in a person’s gender expression or gender identity, or both. That change might be in expression, but not identity, or in identity, but not expression. Or both expression and identity might change together.

Cisgender | A person’s gender identity matches the sex — female or male — assigned at birth.

Deadnaming | is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name. Deadnaming may be unintentional, or a deliberate attempt to deny, mock or invalidate a person's gender identity.

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Portraits of Autism