The Eyes is an annual bilingual photographic magazine that aims to accompany and question the cultural and societal phenomena that shake up society.
For this
Through historical and contemporary portfolios, SMITH & Piton invite us to a transgalactic journey, outlining a subjective panorama on the place played by photography in the construction of gender identities.
The duo imagines its own celestial map – a “Transgalaxy” – to present the portfolios of artists who have marked their journey into the theme. Each of these systems hosts several artist-stars: from icons such as Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin, Christer Stromhölm and David LaChapelle, to pioneers who consciously made use of photography to invent in images the singular expression of their own gender (Marcel Bascoulard, Claude Cahun, Sébastien Lifshitz, Pierre Molinier); from artists whose work tackles issues connected to queer and non-binary identities (Brice Dellsperger, Gabriel García Román, Kama La Mackerel, Kent Monkman) to others who document their own communities with sometimes elusive and un-normalized gender identities (Pierre Andreotti, Del LaGrace Volcano, Laurence Philomène, Rhys Ernst & Zackary Drucker, Sailor De la Jaquette, Yuki Kihara, Annie Sprinkle). Lastly, the last stop of the transgalactic journey groups together mutants, composers of new genders (Ron Athey, Genesis Breyes P-Orridge, Cassils, Parker Day, Shu Lea Cheang, Juliana Huxtable).
In order to offer different perspectives and crossing glances, the issue presents also an interview and an essay by the philosopher Paul B. Preciado and the journalist/art critic Élisabeth Lebovici, who share their views on how photography has become a revolutionary enunciation stage for non-binary or dissident bodies of the regime of sexual difference.
Furthermore, following the invitation of Photocaptionist, Lalla Kowska-Régnier, witch and committed figure of trans-activism, composes a short fiction based on his portrait by SMITH and a series of images from the "DESIDERATION" project.
Read our Q&A with SMITH to learn more about the Transgalactic issue of The Eyes.
How did the idea of a “trans-galactic journey” come about?
At the beginning of the year, the team of The Eyes offered me to operate a selection of artists on the crossed theme of gender and photography. I immediately took two decisions to orient my response to this beautiful invitation: firstly, reduce the "gender topic" to the question of gender as lived, embodied by queer and/or trans artists through photography. And secondly, propose to the performer and curator Nadège Piton, to join me in this research. We met for the first time in 2012 while shooting an art video, and later, in 2016, se organised an exhibition of my work at the art center she was curating for. Since then, we haven't stopped dreaming and working together, both on common artistic projects such as "Désidération", and on exhibition and publishing projects. Nadège, for twenty years, has accompanied many artists and philosophers through exhibition projects, such as Del LaGrace Volcano, Ron Athey, Annie Sprinkle or Paul B. Preciado, who are all present in the magazine. Our collaboration for this issue of The Eyes took the form of a conversation held over several weeks, while quarantined in Paris, during which we evoked and shared the names of artists who had inspired, influenced, accompanied, marked, seduced us... in the course of our own personal and artistic journey. While we were looking for a name for this special issue, our friend the novelist Virginie Despentes, who knows our affection for cosmic universes, suggested the name "Transgalactic". It was perfect. We adapted it to our editorial project, deciding to organize the artists according to categories that function like galaxies: pioneers, guides, settlers, mutants...
How long did it take for the research and the selection of artists?
We started thinking about it in March and reached a final version in September. We have chosen not to approach this theme from a historical or academic perspective, and therefore, be less exhaustive than sentimental. All the works we have picked up have a particular emotional significance for us, and this is why we decided to emphasize our own relationship to their work, rather than choosing works considered as being inevitable, or as landmarks in the history of photography. For example, Nadège was marked by her meeting with Annie Sprinkle in the late 1990s, during a performance that the latter had offered in Paris; Annie's work profoundly changed Nadège's relationship to contemporary art and to the representation of an alternative, sex-positive and profoundly revolutionary femininity: it was therefore obvious for us to include a photographic work by this artist. It was very difficult to make a choice among the very large list of artists we had originally selected, but we hope one day to be able to turn this editorial gesture into a broader exhibition.
You wrote that, in order to understand the projects featured in the magazine, we need to “deconstruct categories, assignments, binaries and fixed concepts”. Can you tell me more?
We consider that the era in which we live today is reaching an aporia – politically, socially, ecologically and culturally. If we want to survive and compose a fairer, healthier, more desirable world, we must question the ways in which we think about the fundamental categories on which modern thinking is based, and which sets up, one against the other, categories that are considered to be opposed: nature/culture, masculine/feminine, alive/dead, real/virtual... Many philosophers have been working since the 1970s to show that these categories are not fundamentally inscribed in reality, but are the object of historical and cultural constructions, which have generally been made at the expense of one of the two parties. We are personally convinced that the boundaries between these two supposedly opposed poles are null and void, and that another vision is possible. As queer and trans people, or generally speaking, as persons belonging to minorities, and thus potentially suffering from systemic oppression, we experience the porosity between these opposites on a daily basis. The binarities seem to us deadly: we think that another world, based on fluidity, symbiosis, exchanges, is possible and even desirable!
Are there any landmark books/exhibitions that shaped your vision about the topic?
Nadège Piton and I describe in the central text of the review the show, books and artists who guided, influenced and amazed us throughout our respective journeys as an artist and a curator. For Nadège, her encounter with the artist, activist, performer Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker who became a PhD in sexology and who has been developing works around her concept of "sex-ecology" for the past ten years, was a fundamental encounter. For my part, the works of the philosopher Paul B. Preciado gave a conceptual framework to my approach to questions of gender and sexuality, linked to a global revolutionary movement. This is why we are particularly pleased to invite these two personalities into our Transgalaxy, through a portfolio and an interview.
In the magazine there’s also a glossary, which I find very interesting and useful. In your opinion, are there any terms that still need to be understood and “absorbed” by society?
If for many of us, notions such as "transition", "genderqueer" or "non-binary" are evident to describe the way we live our relationship to gender, they still seem abstract to a majority of the unconcerned, and some even see it as a fantasy or a fashion thing, due to the growing visibility of these identities in the media. Lack of information leads to ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear, hatred, and has deadly effects on the most invisible, fragile or precarious populations. We believe that educating as many people as possible, through all possible media, including those of the art world, can allow us to achieve a more knowledgeable, inclusive and therefore fairer society. The issue of representation, especially in the contemporary photography community, is far from being trivial: in recent years, more and more people have begun to popularize the practice of specifying pronoun variations (for example: she/her or they/they, or he/they - the combinations are infinite, and differ depending on the language,) both in reality and on our online social profiles. Above all, this initiative makes it possible not to misgender people - i.e. to use, out of ignorance, an inappropriate pronoun, or to presuppose the gender of the person you are addressing based on his or her first name or, for example, his or her gender expression. In France, these questions are still very marginal, and are not yet really addressed, while in some universities in the USA, for example, it is possible to indicate one's pronouns, regardless of what is written on the identity card. This also makes the use of neutral pronouns, such as "they" (untranslatable in French), used in the singular, more visible: many transgender, queer or non-binary people use the singular "they" to define themselves. Instead of saying, "Camille offered me to have lunch with her (or with him)," they will say, "Camille offered me to have lunch with them."
Do you think that our society has reached a great inclusiveness and equality for LGBTQIAE+ people? What else needs to be done?
It is undeniable that the past decade has witnessed an increase in the visibility of trans, non-binary and queer identities in much of the Western world. This visibility has contributed to greater inclusiveness of our paths in society, and sometimes to more sensitive handling of our transition paths, in terms of rights, access to care, and administrative procedures. However, the trans populations, and in particular transfeminine populations, are still massively victims of injustices based solely on their gender and threatened by precariousness, AIDS, and violence of all kinds, particularly police violence, within families, and all state authorities. Huge progress remains to be made.
And what about the art world? What are the responsibilities of people working within the artistic field?
Our responsibility as artists and art workers is to bear in mind that we live in a system rotten with domination and injustice. Those who have access to spaces of speech, visibility, funding, decisions – in short: of power – should be aware that this is a privilege. And as such, it is their duty to make this space open up to other speeches than those that are already over-represented in all fields: artistic, political, media, state... most of the time, cisgendered, white, able-bodied and heterosexual. It's time to make space for new stories and new subjectivities.