Transpose is the next phase of a project [Transgender Ireland] that I have been working on for the last number of years. Transgender Ireland is an on-going documentary project which attempts to educate and engage people on transgender rights through a series of images and text. Each participant was asked the following questions:
1. What individual words (up to ten) describe your experience of being transgender in Ireland?
2. What one question have you been asked by someone in relation to your gender identity that has affected you in either a positive or negative way?
3. If you could change three things today with regard to transgender rights what would they be?
The responses are being recorded alongside relevant images of each participant. The question being posed is ‘How can anyone deny this person any right?’
Transpose will document transgender lives in Ireland through an environmental portraiture project. I've been documenting people in their homes on their own or with their partners and families. We have been making photographs together via direction and collaboration. I also want to document ‘safe spaces’ for transgender people in Dublin and around the country. I've already started with the wonderful space Outhouse on Capel street. Another facet of this project will involve the documentation of trans activists and allies.
In Ireland transgender people cannot have the gender on their birth certificate changed. Ireland is one of the few EU countries that does not allow for legal recognition of transgender people. Other issues that transgender people face are; forced divorce (many couples have found their relationship is strengthened through a transition and they find themselves faced with having to break up their family), adequate access to healthcare, lack of qualified and knowledgeable doctors (some of the participants in this project have been educating the doctors instead of being helped)......and the list goes on.
Again with this project I want to highlight the rights that are denied to transgender people in Ireland.
The images will be exhibited as part of the MFA in Photography program at the University of Ulster in 2014. [transpose] was also exhibited in 2013 as part of the PhotoIreland festival in July.
Please contact me if you would like to be involved. We can meet up and discuss the project in further detail over a coffee/pint. Alison.
E: almcdonnell@hotmail.com
T: @al_mcdonnell