Lia Clay Miller Analysis.

Lia Clay Miller is a Trans feminine portrait and fashion photographer from New York, USA, who is most known for her fashion work, whilst also finding an interest in depicting topics based around the LGBTQ+ community, specifically the Trans community. Lia Clay Miller often takes her photographs within an external location or internal studio space, mostly of other Transgender and gender non-conforming people, focusing both on their fashion outfits as well as how the sitter wishes to portray themselves to the camera as well as within their everyday life and the people around them. I decided to focus my research on the work of Lia Clay Miller, mainly on her fashion work which she has even been quoted to say is “a love letter to the Trans community highlighting their contributions to art, style, and culture.” I decided to focus on these series of photographs for my research as I intend to create a series of photographs based on myself and my journey and transition as a Transgender, Bisexual male. By researching and analysing the work of this artist for my final major project, I hope to be able to create a series of photographic works based on the theme of gender identity, the LGBTQ+ community based on the theme of portraiture, self-portraiture, and documentary photography.

Many of the photographs created by Lia Clay Miller keep the focus solely on the sitter within the studio space or external landscape to keep the focus of their target audience on the chosen sitter. Within this series of photographs Lia Clay Miller takes photographs of other Trans and gender non-conforming people in front of a plain background combined with very simple set dressing and props since they want the images to be more about the sitter than anything else. By doing this I feel that Lia Clay Miller is able to create a series of candid imagery that creates a story based on the sitters’ gender identity and expression.

As a lot of the photographs created by Lia Clay Miller are staged within either an external location or a studio setting a lot of the lighting, she uses are artificial or natural, and often times the set design of the studio space is so minimal so that no attention is drawn away from the sitter within her photographs. Unlike the other artists whose work I will also be looking at and researching for my final major project, Lia Clay Miller’s work is focused on documenting other Trans and gender non-conforming people who have also got experience working and contributing to the art and fashion industries. By creating her photographs in this way, it allows Lia Clay Miller to document her sitters in a way that allows them to show their gender identity freely and in a comfortable manner and create more representation behind the lens. I feel that by portraying the themes of gender identity in this way the artist, Lia Clay Miller, has been able to create a series of candid and performative fashion and portraiture photographs that allows her to show her target audience the fluidity of gender and the ways that her chosen sitters express that both privately and publicly around other people.

Whilst looking at and researching the work of Lia Clay Miller I have noticed that she uses plain backdrops and simple set design within the studio space in order to lead the attention to the sitter within the photograph, often through the creation of “leading lines”. These backdrops within the studio space are also used to create a focal point and highlight the sitter so that the attention is drawn directly to them. This is something that I find almost inspirational towards my own ideas relating to the themes of portraiture, more specifically self-portraiture photography, transitions and change and how I intend for my own photographs for my final major project to look.

For my outcome relating to this artist research, I will be creating my own series of self-portraiture photographs based on the theme of the LGBTQ+ community, more specifically my own struggle and transition as a Transgender, Bisexual male. Since I will be focusing my work on self-portraiture, I intend to take photographs of myself within my own home to document my own transitional process and the change I have gone through and continue to go through and the struggles I have and face with gender identity, dysphoria and how I am seen both socially by others and by myself. I hope that by creating my final major project based on this topic and the themes I could spread more awareness with my target audience about the lives of transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people.