OH-3114_DeLaGraceVolcano_e01.mp3
Del LaGrace Volcano: [00:00:01] Well, I think it’s similar to why a project like this is important, an oral history project. I think that my work has multiple functions, one of the functions is to show queer and trans and people as, being heroes in the world and not to pathologies them, and this you know, this is my community, so I think the way, and I have interesting theories which may or may not want to hear about why some work gains, achieves mainstream success and just to put it briefly, like ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, can be very popular because why? Because the hero dies and there’s a people to feel sorry for people like me.
Del LaGrace Volcano: [00:00:59] People like them, you know, so it’s like it’s safe to say they get to feel good about their liberal credentials and at the same time, you don’t have to get to close. So my work does not work like that. My work is, you know, very much about agency. Giving people in the work is the most important I mean, I employed what I call a queer feminist methodology in the way that I’m taking photographs. And you saw a little bit of that with Jahidah… We were talking before we take the pictures. I work with people. I’m not going to take photographs from them. I just take that, you know, even the the language that is used around photography to me is the antithesis of everything I believe in. I don’t I want to make images with subjects that are speaking, subjects that have a voice. I don’t ask anyone to sign a model release or a contract. I mean, sometimes they do, until they have seen the image. And I’m very much on their own terms. I do lectures on this and if you look at your typical model release, it says we have you giving the photographer the right to distort, to use misuse, do whatever they want. And it’s outrageous, you know, so that’s not what I do. And it’s very different to the process of creating the images is as important to me as the product, because also it’s about how people want to be represented. And I’m very good at making people feel good about themselves and the way that they look, because I’ve done a lot of a lot of work on myself, having grown up in a hermaphroditic body and feeling very…feeling I that I was monstrosity, I know I can take pictures of myself and I like how I look and I feel good and it reinforces the kind of positive self-image.
Del LaGrace Volcano: [00:03:00] It builds self-esteem because we live in such a superficial, two dimensional world. You know, we all need to have these images, but more than that, it’s about communication. So my work is very much about communicating certain messages. And before I will photograph anybody, that’s working with me, people can pay me, I don’t care that much, well, You know, do, but if it’s me asking them, then it’s like we have to be on the same page and the have a similar political agenda.