OFM Art: Queering the Masculine and Feminine
Through Portraiture Photography
“Art serves as communication—a tool for sharing our thoughts, ideas, and emotions. It has the power to change individuals, similarly to the influence of nature.”
– Grace Cheney
Meet Grace Cheney (they/them) and Aimes Lily (they/them). Cheney and Lily have set out to redefine portraiture photography through their lens as queer, nonbinary artists. What stands out about their portraiture photography? They collaborate with queer, transgender, and gender-expansive people to create portraits that capture the personalities of the people they photograph. Their artwork depicts LGBTQ people in authentic ways. These artists are two examples of many who are working to fill the gaping holes in representation of queer culture.
Images of queer and trans people in media are often either nonexistant or oversexualized. Cheney and Lily are both immersed in queer culture, taking note of disparities between depictions of queer culture and actual lived experiences and expressions of queer people.
While Cheney and Lily were not aware of one another’s practices until this article, their processes have striking similarities. Both artists view their process as a collaboration with the people they photograph. They also each seek to understand and accurately represent people they photograph and are mindful of each model’s goals. This approach is revolutionary and stands in stark contrast to the process of objectification commonly seen in portraiture photography.
“My goal is to capture people in a way that represents them well and makes them feel like their strongest, most authentic, and vulnerable selves,” Cheney says.
Each artist has a unique approach and noteworthy differences as well.
“I am a photographer and mixed media artist,” Cheney says. “I will often use my photography as a base for large-scale, mixed-media work. I will start with a photograph that I took and treat it some way.”
Cheney grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and now resides in Portland, Oregon. Cheney is in the process of obtaining art therapy licensure and brings their lens as a mental health professional into their artwork practice.
In Cheney’s most recent series, Worthy, Cheney works with models to come up with empowering affirmations that serve as titles for the work. The artwork titled “I deserve to care for myself” came out of a conversation between a transgender model, named Eddie, and Cheney.
“When Eddie came in to model, we talked about what taking up space individually and in community looks like for Eddie as a queer, trans person,” Cheney says.
Worthy, as a series, pushes back on the oversexualization of queer bodies.
“I am concerned that oversexualization of queer bodies is disruptive to queer people holding and sharing space,” Cheney says. The imagery in this series serves as an empowering reminder for the model, audience, and artist that holding space, taking space, and sharing space is a part of the human experience and is something everyone deserves. Cheney and Lily both actively hold space for people through their portraiture practices. Lily’s work holds space and seeks to fill a gap in nuanced representation of queer people.
Lily grew up and still resides in the Denver metro area. They spent their youth immersed in creativity and started drawing comics at a young age.
“When I was a kid, I found an old Pentax camera in my dad’s attic. I loved the clicking sound that the camera made and began collecting cameras–even broken ones” Lily says. They remember wanting to be a photographer from a young age, viewing photography as an interesting way for people to see what you see.
In Lily’s current series, The Queer Shadow Project, Lily casts colored lights onto the model and background of each portrait. Each model is photographed with colored lights that correspond to a gender or sexuality flag that they associate with.
“What is interesting about this project, and queerness in general, is that you can really challenge typical notions of what femininity and masulinity look like,” Lily says. They photograph people of many genders and identities to portray diverse expressions of queerness.
Like Cheney, Lily views their portraiture practice as a collaborative effort. Lily’s favorite part about this series is having the chance to make art with other people. They take many photographs in each session and then flip through them with the model.
“I love the moment when a person pauses at a photo from their session and realizes others can see them in the way they see themselves,” Lily says. One goal they have for this series is to expand representation of gender-expansive people.
“I hope that the audience will also be able to see themselves reflected in this series. When we see gender represented in the media, especially for nonbinary folks, it is very androgonous, versus in The Queer Shadow Project, you can see all the different ways it can it exist and how it actually exists,” Lily adds.
Queer Shadow Project has captured individuals, families, and couples. Lily photographed Kani in the light of the agender flag to highlight one of their multiple intersectionalities.
“My name is Kani (they/them), your resident aromantic, pansexual, trans, nonbinary thembo who’s totally poly+ partnered and will still entertain thirsty DMs. I am happy to be a part of Queer Shadow Project because queer identities in Asian cultures often go unnoticed. This photoshoot aims to bring forth the presence of queer trans BIPOC in the local Denver community,” Kani says.
Lily would like to expand the project to include more people of the global majority (PoGM), neurodiverse folks, and disabled people. Lily is actively accepting new models at the time of this article’s publication.
If you are interested in being photographed for The Queer Shadow Project, you can reach out to them through their Instagram @lowkeylilyart. You can also see more work by Grace Cheney through their Instagram @gracecheneyphotography. You can find Kani on Instagram @kani.dang.
Photos By Grace Cheney and Aimes Lily
