June T. Sanders speaks with Kelsey Sucena on Paralytic States: Sucena’s collection of essays and photographs about coming into themself as a trans*non-binary person in post-2016 America.
Kelsey Sucena is a trans*/nonbinary photographer, writer, and park ranger whose work rests at the intersection of photography and text. Their most recent work is a multi-disciplinary publication featuring writings and photographs made across the country in the wake of the 2016 election.
Kelsey’s work has an abject honesty and vulnerability to it. It is in some parts a nod and a contribution to auto theory and its champions like T Flesichmann & Mackenzie Wark. In others, a messy swim through the landscape of gender, transness, capitalism, and the American experience.
Paralytic States is far more than a housing for recent work. It is itself a force; a towering newspaper that stretches the possibility of image and text where the two mediums don’t just support each other but complicate each other’s narratives. Their process and insight puts them in the camp of artists who espouse the power of urgent, radical, and experimental publishing. And to me, mark a new lineage of poetics in image-making.
But beyond all that, it is a reminder. To witness - to hold - and to care. In their own words: “I am here to say that we are drowning because we have yet to read the waves.”
June T. Sanders in conversation with Kelsey Sucena
