Trans Self-Representations: Non-Binary Visual Theory in Contemporary Photography, is an interdisciplinary trans visual studies approach to contemporary lens-based self-representations produced by trans and non-binary people. This project is committed to rigorous interdisciplinarity that actively works to undo the partitioning of various identity-based discourses from one another. The project establishes a much-needed field and method of trans visual studies at the intersection of trans studies and visual studies and their methods.

Each of the four chapters of my projects focuses on a particular trans self-representation milestone and sub-genre of trans/ non-binary self-representations and each chapter takes a distinct approach to thinking through the cultural and visual significance of each discrete intervention. Overall the interdisciplinary research brings together trans studies, queer theory, photography theory, critical race studies, cultural studies, media studies and postcolonial theory. The chapters of this project are dedicated to looking at trans self-representations and critically addressing the ways trans self-image photographs have the potential to offer a space wherein makers can interrogate the ways their own changing corporealities engage identity, representation, intervene in the trans visual field, how “matrixes of intelligibility” and “racializing assemblages” The photos tranifest – or bring into being new trans and non-binary identities, forwarding them via performative self-portraiture.

My research reveals that trans and non-binary self-representations are reshaping identity categories and challenging and augmenting contemporary theory and imaging practice. In establishing the field of Trans Visual Studies I also work to establish trans visual studies methods that are non-binary and de-essentialized methods for apprehending contemporary visual culture. This project argues that trans visual culture is a shifting field with diverse representational approaches and corporealities. I also argue that we need increased scholarship in this area and a more in-depth investigation into trans visual culture. To consider the current moment of unprecedented amount of trans visual culture without engaging in trans visual studies analysis of the phenomenon is to conduct critical error and run the risk of missing the significant impact that trans visual culture is having on visual culture, art, identity constituencies, theories of representations and imaging practices.

The recent surge in global environmental justice movements has been accompanied and often leveraged by a resurgence of movements for Indigenous peoples’ justice. As these interconnected and mutually reinforcing movements have grown in parallel, they have also become more visible through dynamic “movement cultures” – cultural expressions that are born of the aforementioned movements. These cultural demonstrations of the struggles for environmental and Indigenous peoples’ justice stretch far beyond neatly printed posters and photographs, extending into mass collective walks, radical re-workings of cartography, the reclamation of names and places previously snatched up by colonialism, and aesthetic objects that resist co-optation through their continued connections to peoples, territories, and everyday life. Through the analysis of a variety of media – from grassroots drone video, to political printmaking and performative protest – this project puts forward the notion of decolonial worlding as an umbrella term to describe the myriad acts of creative resistance that emerge in generative opposition to colonialism, capitalism, and extractivism. These acts are united in their diversely expressed commitment to an actual postcolonial future.

Drawing upon the methods of visual culture studies, with a commitment to decolonial and feminist approaches, The Aesthetics of Decolonial Worlding unites diverse decolonial projects through rigorous examination of what these activists and artists are resisting, as well as the futures they envision. The projects and actions explored seek to crack open and undermine past frames of hegemonic perception by inserting visions of subjectivity, nationhood, and sovereignty that are not necessarily new, but have been forcibly oppressed through colonial regimes of representation, state oppression, and biopolitical control. While some of these decolonial interventions may seem limited to the spheres of ephemeral protest actions or temporary art exhibitions, they also begin to simultaneously build and remember other worlds. They articulate an alternative visual narrative that seeks to overturn histories of colonialism and reveal counter-visualities of creative decolonial resistance. This project ultimately shows that these visual manifestations of environmental justice and self-determination comprise a collective aesthetics of decolonial worlding, and that turning our attention toward such actions may lead to a more just material reality across Turtle Island.