ChrisSoFly’s self-portraits celebrate his love for fashion, music, and awakening from rigid gender roles.

Growing up, the Sanford, Florida-based multidisciplinary artist never imagined he’d feel comfortable wearing dresses, wigs, and makeup, and sharing photos of himself with the world. “Once I finally put my own fear of judgment aside and became comfortable in my own skin and started dressing how I wanted and expressing myself freely,” Chris writes, “ I realized that this may be my purpose….showing that boys can be princesses too.”

In his self-portraits, which he shares predominantly on Instagram – often with tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments – Chris unapologetically and joyfully confronts the camera with bedazzled glory.
The series started earlier this year when Chris began designing fashion pieces while teaching himself to sew through Youtube videos. His creations manifest themselves as pastel dresses, flowers in his hair, posing before floral backdrops that highlight his exuberance and power. I spoke with Chris to learn more about his experience and work.

I spoke with Chris to learn more about his experience and work.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with ChrisSoFly

PostedDecember 3, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

TagsChrisSoFly, self-portraiture, collaborative portraiture, fashion photography, multi-disciplinary artists, toxic masculinity, queer identity and photography, new photography, contemporary portraiture

Venus. © Lorenzo Triburgo and Sarah Van Dyck

After 10 years of taking testosterone, NYC-based artist Lorenzo Triburgo stopped cold for the duration of their residency and exhibition at Baxter Street Camera Club of NY.

During the process, Triburgo collaborated with partner Sarah Van Dyck to produce a series of glittered environmental performance-portraits that reference art history and contort the ever-complicated gaze. Van Dyck photographed Triburgo in the historically queer haven of Queens, New York City's The People's Beach at Jacob Riis Park, Triburgo's body grounded in a space they describe as “sanctuary and resistance.” Triburgo poses with equal nods to Michaelangelo’s David and Botticelli's Venus, confronting viewers’ potential blindspots to the gray areas of gender identity.

Titling the series Shimmer Shimmer, Triburgo and Van Dyck pace these portraits with photos of glitter representing constellations – a celestial breath of calm, hope, and magic. For Triburgo, this collaboration responds to reductive assumptions of queer and trans identity in popular culture, painting gender as something that is as fluid and enigmatic as the stars above.

Triburgo and I spoke to illuminate, clarify, and perhaps open the door to more questions.

PostedNovember 24, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

TagsLorenzo Triburgo, Sarah Van Dyck, Camera Club of New York, Baxter Street Camera Club of NY, queer identity and photography, performance art, photography and performance, the gaze, Riis Park Beach, queer resistance, the shimmer, shimmer shimmer

Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America © iO Tillet Wright — *Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America* © iO Tillet Wright

Roula Seikaly speaks with iO Tillet Wright about Self Evident Truths, his ten-year project (and now photography book) of 10,000+ humanizing portraits documenting people in the USA that identify as ANYTHING OTHER than 100% straight.

I was champagne-drunk while listening to United States President-elect Joseph R. Biden formally address the nation on November 7th. It was also my birthday, and there was much to celebrate. When I heard him include trans and queer Americans in a long list of people to whom he owes this victory, as though he was naming family members, I cried. I thought of my transgender wife and all of our friends in queer and other marginalized communities for whom the previous four years particularly have been terrifyingly fraught, and how it may be slightly easier to breathe now.

With that in mind, it’s a pleasure to introduce this interview with photographer iO Tillet-Wright. In 2010, Tillet-Wright embarked on a nationwide project to photograph people who are generally lumped into the category “LGBTQIA++,” which the photographer/activist rightly calls out for how it generalizes the otherwise glorious variations within queer communities.

10 years and 10,000 portraits later, the project Self Evident Truths: 10,000 Portraits of Queer America celebrates individuality that is barely contained within the photographic frame and holds immeasurable possibilities beyond a clumsy acronym. Published by Prestel this October, the 544-page book is monumental for its size, scope, and content - “10,000 faces of survival, charisma, and charm” - alike.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with iO Tillet-Wright

These Self-Portraits Show That Boys Can Be Princesses Too

The Celestial Complexity of Queer Identity

10 Years and 10,000 Portraits of Queer America