TRANSGENDER

photographer Francesca Gallian – www.gallianiphoto.com

I went to Thailand, specifically to do a project on the transgender community.

Supposed to stay for only five weeks, I ended up staying for six months, which

were amongst the happiest of my life. At first, when I approached people to

photograph, I was met with suspicion. After photographing the first few

subjects, developing my work and showing it to them, I got a wonderful

response. All of a sudden, I became popular and the number of people in the

community coming to me wanting to be photographed became ever larger.

The magic came with accessing their spirits by spending time with them,

experiencing their world and learning to have a profound respect for their unique

personalities. My goal was to show their beauty, power and dignity.

My desire to photograph the transgender community was ignited by the stigma

imposed on it as a whole by society. The photographs are all manually developed and intervened in with toners,

using a technique unique to my process.