‘Ken. To be destroyed’ at Moving Trans* History Forward

For this exhibition the project, ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ was shown as a projection which included new photographs and new material from the archive. The projection was shown during the Moving Trans* History Forward conference at University of Victoria, B.C. This was the first Trans* Archives conference ever to have taken place. As well as the exhibition Davidmann gave a talk on the project as part of the Queering Trans* Archives Roundtable discussion with Dr KJ Rawson, The Digital Transgender Archive, College of the Holy Cross USA and Nick Matte, Curator of the Sexual Representations Collection, University of Toronto Canada.

This exhibition was funded by LCC Research.

The project arises out of a family secret - that Davidmann’s uncle Ken (K) was trans*. The family attempted to erase this from history and the family photograph album depicts K as male.

In 2011 Davidmann found a collection of family letters and documents about K being trans* in envelopes labelled “to be destroyed”. At the same time, she came across a set of K and Hazel’s wedding ‘proofs’. Looking at the photographs and letters together it seemed to Davidmann that in one hand she was holding an emblem of what in the case of trans* people a conventional family album allowed – the erasure of the trans* life - and in the other evidence of the experiences that would have been erased.

Without Davidmann’s involvement the family would have expunged the fact that there was a trans* family member. Using letters, photographs and photographic processes Davidmann tells the story that is missing from K and Hazel’s wedding photographs. In this work she is holding a ‘conversation’ with the family album, queering it, and returning a new version of the story to the family history.

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