Gallery of Illustrious Queers

Portraits by Jordan Reznick

Banner image:

x, Ithaca, New York (detail), 2018
Archival pigment print, 42 x 56 Inches
Courtesy of the artist.

Gallery of Illustrious Queers contends that honoring the breadth of trans people’s embodiments and life experiences builds movement for transgender pride and liberation.

The title of the project references Mathew Brady’s nineteenth century “Gallery of Illustrious Americans” that made the act of sitting for one’s portrait a moral act of nation-building for white settlers. As a counterarchive to such conventional cultural icons, these portraits intervene in the colonial history of photography. The impudent gaze of each subject commands the respect due to gender outlaws. They oppose the narrowing of possibilities for gender variance that comes with the medicalization and mainstream representation of trans identity. By centering those whose gender variance intersects with other marginalized differences, the project stands for the idea that transgender liberation is intimately bound with decolonization struggles for racial, gender, and disability liberation.

Supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

LGBTQIA+

Gather, share knowledge and celebrate our unique identities at the queerest library ever. Visit the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center, the gateway to the Library’s broader collections documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and allies’ history and culture, with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area.