Trans Lives: Presenting the (Extra) Ordinary

Empirical trans research has tended to rely on verbal accounts. In contrast, this research employs photo-elicitation methods. This allowed a different kind of access to trans people’s lives, and to generating knowledge about their experiences of gender, immediate social environments, and changing bodies - through the visual realm.

Participants were given cameras and notebooks and asked to take photographs for one week during the course of their everyday lives, and to record their reasons for taking the pictures.

The use of visual methods reflects the centrality of the visual realm in the discursive formation of gender identities and the negotiation of everyday life. Through this process, participants were able to present their accounts on their own terms and a strong personal “voice” became a component of the work.

Sara Davidmann and Simon Croft co-curated the exhibition.

This exhibition was subsequently presented as a show-reel, Trans Lives: Presenting the (Extra) Ordinary, at The Trans Community Conference: Our Bodies, Our Minds, Our Environments, London, 2008.