Photography - ihaveasickness

My hybrid photography practice explores my positionality as a trans person who lives in a province that is often hostile to both their art practice and survival, and who seeks refuge in the joy and worldmaking of queer and trans community, family, and identity. I explore these themes through a practice that includes both performative self-portraiture, captured digitally, as well as photographing my loved ones and community members on film. These intimate images, some taken as part of my performance practice, some from my everyday life, create an archive that showcases how trans people live with one another and build robust futures together. At the center of my work is a trans-for-trans (t4t) ethos of care that aims to undo the violence of the cisgender gaze, an authorizing force which seeks out and pathologizes difference. The gaze I seek to bring to my work resists the current moment in which we are, as a society, obsessed with taxonomizing trans people into endless micro-identities as a result of the community’s increased visibility.

Transmisogyny Series

(2020 - ongoing)

Transmisogyny Series: What did you do to yourself? (2021), 16” by 22”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag

Transmisogyny Series: Truck Nutz (2021), 16” by 22”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag

Transmisogyny Series: DYKE (2020), 22” by 16”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag

Transmisogyny Series: Brick (2020), 16” by 22”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag

Transmisogyny Series: Fishy (2020), 16” by 22”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag

Transmisogyny Series, Installation view (In My Skin at Dunlop Art Gallery, 2022), photographed by Don Hall

Shapeshifter Diptych

(2022)

Shapeshifter Diptych: Femme (2022), 16” by 22”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag, made in collaboration with Rose Butch at Do Trans People Dream of Nonbinary Sheep?, Tender Container’s peer mentorship platform

Shapeshifter Diptych: Butch (2022), 16” by 22”, digital photograph on Hahnemühle photo rag, made in collaboration with Rose Butch at Do Trans People Dream of Nonbinary Sheep?, Tender Container’s peer mentorship platform

35mm Film

(2022 - ongoing)

Cat (2022), 35mm film

Cas (2022), 35mm film

shimby (2022), 35mm film

Tanya/Tamás (2022), 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5), taken at Do Trans People Dream of Nonbinary Sheep?, Tender Container’s peer-mentorship platform.

Kendell (2022), 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5), taken at Do Trans People Dream of Nonbinary Sheep?, Tender Container’s peer-mentorship platform.

Jove (2022), 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5), taken at Do Trans People Dream of Nonbinary Sheep?, Tender Container’s peer-mentorship platform.

Paula & Cat (2023), 35mm film (Lomography Metropolis)

Aspen & Cat (2023), 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5)

[Redacted]
(2024 - ongoing)

But what happens when these networks of relationality fracture? In [Redacted], a sort of series within the larger series that is my archive, I explore the edges of my imagined community by contending with the images of people who have expressed a desire to no longer be in community with me. Their images are carefully cut out of or scratched from the film before being scanned in.

[Redacted] #1 (2024), scratched 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5)

[Redacted] #2 (2024), scratched 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5)

[Redacted] #3, (2024), scratched 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5)

[Redacted] #4 (2024), scratched 35mm film (Psychedelic Blues #5)

[Redacted] #5, (2024), scratched 35mm film

Cat in My Studio

(2025)

I worked with my partner, sometimes-muse, and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Cat C. Haines, to make a series of intimate portraits in my studio. I decided to shoot in black and white and develop the film myself as a way of engaging with and referencing Cat’s practice as a process-based filmmaker. She walked me through developing the film in the make-shift darkroom she built in her basement out of garbage bags and duct tape. We used instant coffee, vitamin C, and washing soda as a developer. While this wasn’t my first experience with hand-processing film it was still a bit of a revelation. As filmmaker Morgan Sears Williams notes, “hand-processing film with caffenol or organic developers made from plant matter (also known as eco-processing) necessitates working directly with the film, resulting in an intimate collaboration between material, concept, and aesthetic.”

Cat in My Studio #1 (2025), Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol

Cat in My Studio #2 (2025), Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol

Cat in My Studio #3 (2025, Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol

Cat in My Studio #4 (2025), Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol

Cat in My Studio #5 (2025), Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol

Cat in My Studio #6 (2025), Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol

Cat in My Studio #7 (2025), Ilford HP5+ 400 shot at 1600 and developed in caffenol