Carson Stachura captures a reality in which queer and trans people “can be seen, not just looked at”
This New York-based analogue photographer is going against the dominant gaze on trans identity with expansive and expressive depictions of gender and queerness.
Carson Stachura’s image making practice centres on their close friends and immediate community. Although the participants in their photographic work are everyday people that the photographer knows and loves, Carson’s images aim to create an entirely “otherworldly effect”. From set design, to lighting to visual cues and finer details, “the fact that these scenes are ‘produced’, is a means of rejecting the idea that the camera is an inherently neutral mediator”, they share.
Determined to make a space outside of the straight cis gaze, the photographer likes to use their visual work as an exercise in “collaborative world building”, through which queer and trans individuals in their community “can be seen, not just looked at”. Aware of the power of their perspective as a queer, trans photographer, in their portrait work they aim to pose an alternative lens under which “subjects can playfully exist as their most extravagant, expressive selves”.
Part archivist, part visual artist, the photographer’s practice is directly in conversation with depictions of trans identity across history and actively draws upon “a critical analysis of gender transgression within the twentieth century archive”, says Carson. Given that photography has historically been appropriated as a tool to “construct a materially violent and limited definition of gender expansiveness”, the photographer explains, their process of documenting hopes to allow for a shared and equal exchange between photographer and sitter.
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Carson Stachura: I Felt Your Shape (Copyright © Carson Stachura, 2024)
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Ellis Tree (she/her) joined It’s Nice That as a junior writer in April 2024 after graduating from Kingston School of Art with a degree in Graphic Design. Across her research, writing and visual work she has a particular interest in printmaking, self-publishing and expanded approaches to photography.