FMP Final Evaluation.

Final Evaluation.

For my final response to my Final Major Project, I decided to focused on the themes of portraiture, self-portraiture, and documentary photography, creating a series of work that I felt would depict the themes of gender identity and expression as well as Transgender lives and struggles, specifically my own. I decided to focusing on these themes and styles of photography through newly created images as well as found imagery of me as a child and teenager. I felt that by focusing on this idea for my Final Major Project I could potentially add my own personal insight into the Transgender life and the experiences people like me have even in our personal life when coming to terms with our gender identity and expression and figuring out who we are. For me that was shown through expressing and presenting myself as male as a child through more masculine things like wearing football kits, participating in sports, having my hair cut short. Then when I was a teenager, I started presenting in a more feminine way due to social peer pressure in high school and bullying. Which led me to, the present day where I am out and presenting myself masculine as a Transgender male. For my research for this project, I looked into a few contemporary and historical artists and photographers such as Del LaGrace Volcano, Catherine Opie, Lia Clay Miller, and Claude Cahun, who have all experimented and created a series of work based on portraiture, self-portraiture and gender identity and expression, whether it’s their own or someone else’s, using their work to help guide and inspire the ideas for my own responses to these themes.

 

I decided to base the majority of my Final Major Project on portraiture and self-portraiture through the combination of “found imagery” and newly created images within my home environment. I felt that by creating my Final Major Project outcomes in this way I could create a series of work that candidly shows my own experiences whilst struggling with my gender identity and the different changes I went through whilst I made sense of and came to terms with myself, learning what being Transgender meant and how being a Trans man became something that felt comfortable and right for me. In order to document this idea further within my Final Major Project I decided to combine those created images with photographs of me as a child and as a teenager. From the ages of 4-10 I was presenting and expressing myself in the stereotypical masculine way: getting my hair cut short, wearing mostly football kits or just the shorts of a football kit and no shirt. At this age I was even telling other kids my own age who were outside of my family, that I was a boy and using the name Jack with them without family members knowing. Of course, at that age in the early 2000’s I didn’t know what being Transgender was or meant, I just knew I was uncomfortable in my own body and using the birth-given name and I was happier when others saw me as male and as “Jack”.

 

However, this changed as I grew older and started attending high school. I got bullied a lot during high school for being physically female but having short hair. So, at that time I decided to grow my hair out and started to dress more feminine and use my birth-given name. I only have the one photo of myself from that time and that’s the prom photo that I have included within my series of images. I feel that the fact that it is the only photo of it’s kind in existence and within this series shows how uncomfortable and unhappy I was presenting and expressing my gender this way. I felt that I was pretending to be something I wasn’t and would rarely ever let people take any photographs of me at all during my teenage years. It was only after I left high school and started college in 2014 that I found out what being Transgender was through a friend of mine being a Trans man, that I realised that, that was who I am. During college I started going by the name Tyler with that friend and using he/him pronouns and I went through the process of cutting my hair short and dressing more masculine once again.

 

Which is why for the last couple of images of the final outcome I decided to create a couple images in the self-portraiture style documenting the process of cutting my hair, wearing clothes that are more masculine and a close-up of half of my face with Transgender flag coloured face paint. I feel that by including these final images within my project I was able to show some of the changes that I went through whilst accepting myself and coming out as a Transgender man and even so, still representing how some of it can still be a struggle. For example, the photo where I am cutting my own hair, you can clearly see the marks on my shoulders from wearing my chest binder all day, and the fact that I am cutting my hair instead of getting it done at a barber shop or hair salon shows the discomfort I feel about stepping foot into any of those places due to the gender stereotypes assigned to each of them as well as the fear of not wanting to be misgendered whilst attending those places.

 

I feel by keeping the sitter as the main focal point within my work I was able to significantly emphasize specific moods and atmospheres within my work through the manipulation of both camera compositions, the use of leading lines, and even my use of the formal elements of lighting, colours, and shapes. I wanted the editing process and my photographs to be kept fairly simple so as to not distract any attention away from the sitter within my photographs, plus I just wanted them to be a really candid and open representation of what my experiences as a Transgender male are like. By documenting my photographs in this way, both editing wise and by creating a narrative/timeline from my photographs I hope to raise more awareness about Transgender lives and people through my work in a way that makes the audience who look at my photographs realise that even privately in my own personal life there are still struggles and fears about acceptance from other people around me that still affect me and I know from having other Trans friends that they share similar experiences and fears to what I do. I feel that these decisions that I made during planning for my photoshoot, during the photoshoot, and during the editing process also help to create a sense of narrative as these camera compositions and my simplistic editing process leave the photographs really “raw” and don’t distract attention away from what I have documented.

 

I feel that my combination of both portraiture and cosplay photography work well within my photos for this project. However, I do feel that I could have experimented better with the narrative/timeline I created within my work if I had, had more found imagery to document these themes further. I also feel that I could potentially continue this project, however, as I continue on with my transitioning process as a Trans man, maybe even one day updating this project when I start with the more medical side of my transition such as hormone replacement therapy (getting on Testosterone) and even getting top surgery one day. With the knowledge and idea in mind that I could potentially add to and expand this project further as I go along my transition it leaves me quite excited and intrigued to find out what else I could one day make to include to this project.