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.