‘Ken. To be destroyed ‘ at PARcSPACE Gallery, London College of Communication

This exhibition at the Photography and the Archive Research Centre PARcSPACE Gallery was part of the LCC Graduate School launch. This exhibition showed new photographs from the project. As well as new photographs the exhibition also included a cabinet with some of the original archive material.

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.

This new showing was organized by Robin Christian, Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) Projects Officer, and was accompanied by an edition of Fieldstudy, edited by Val Williams.

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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