Online Conversations:
Jess T. Dugan: Exploring Identity Through Photography
October 23, 2020

Representations of older transgender people are nearly absent from our culture. Photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled throughout the United States and created To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults. A very unusual, human, and moving body of work, Dugan uncovers the complex intersection of gender, age, race, and ethnicity throughout the big cities and small towns of our nation with a discriminating and loving eye. The featured individuals share a wide variety of profound life narratives, offering an unprecedented historical record of transgender experience and activism. The experience of finding their subjects, sharing the project, and creating an outstanding exhibition and publication make for a fascinating example of how images, and the power of photography, can transcend representation.

Please join us for this expansive artist talk as Jess discusses To Survive on This Shore along with other projects as well: their ongoing self-portraiture, and their continuing exploration, through photography, of larger questions about how identity is formed, desire is expressed, and intimate connection is sought.This promises to be a provocative hour of photography and discussion, unveiling how the medium is used as an important identity tool in the 21st century. Please register now and note the earlier than usual 11am start time. See you then.

Jess T. Dugan received their MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, their Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard University, and their BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Their work has been widely exhibited and is in permanent collections of museums throughout the country. They are represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL.