**"First Ever Selfie Cover!":** *Cosmopolitan* **Magazine, Influencers, and the Mainstreaming of Selfie Style**

### **Mehita Iqani**

**Abstract:** This paper offers a critical analysis of a single image: the recently published "first ever selfie cover" of *Cosmopolitan* magazine (the South African edition) published in March 2019. The image features three South African "influencers", and was purportedly taken by the women themselves, using a remote shutter release attached to a cable. In examining the image that was included on the cover, I make an argument about both its aesthetics and politics. In terms of the former, I examine the production values and composition of the image and consider how it relates to selfie style as understood in scholarship so far. In terms of the latter, I consider the extent to which the naming of the image as a selfie intersects with claims made about the genre's capacity to empower and reshape oppressive visual culture. I argue that this case study shows how the selfie has been appropriated into mainstream commercial visual culture. This case study is situated within relevant scholarship to do with the consumer magazine and selfies, before the image in question is introduced and contextualised. Finally, the chapter develops an analytical argument about the aesthetics and politics of the commercial appropriation of selfie imagery.

#### **1. Introduction**

In this chapter, I aim to reflect on some of the ways in which selfie culture has become mainstreamed and appropriated by powerful commercial institutions that both construct and profit from particular narratives of consumption and aspiration, such as women's magazines. Specifically, I examine a particular case study, the so-called "first ever selfie cover" of the South African edition of *Cosmopolitan* magazine, which was published in February 2019. In examining the image that was included on the cover, I make an argument about both its aesthetics and politics. In terms of the former, I examine the production values and design of the image and consider how it relates to selfie style as understood in scholarship so far. In terms of the latter, I consider the extent to which the naming of the image as a selfie intersects with claims made about genre's capacity to empower and reshape oppressive visual culture. This chapter is structured as follows: first, I situate this case study within relevant scholarship to do with the consumer magazine and selfies; second, I introduce the image in question and discuss its composition and dissemination; third, I develop an

analytical argument about the aesthetics and politics of the commercial appropriation of selfie imagery.

#### **2.** *Cosmopolitan* **Magazine, Glossy Covers, and Selfies**

A huge amount of research has been done on magazines, and a detailed discussion of this is outside of the scope of this paper (though refer to Iqani (2012b) for an indicative summary of classic literature on the genre, as well as Rooks et al. (2016) for a sense of new emerging scholarship on magazines). In terms of work specific to the *Cosmopolitan* brand, a similar wealth of scholarship is evident, which is worth briefly touching upon. The history of the magazine has been written, with its roots in the White feminism of the 1960s and how this was embodied in the life and career of the *Cosmopolitan* editor Helen Gurley-Brown (Hauser 2016; Scanlon 2010) and its links to the rise of feminised consumer culture has also received attention (Landers 2010) and, of course, critique from feminist scholars (McCracken 1982, 1993). The extent to which the "fun fearless female" discourse is globalised (and localised) in various national editions of the magazine has been articulated (Machin and van Leeuwen 2005; Machin and Thornborrow 2003; Machin and van Leeuwen 2003). How the magazine intersected with traditional culture in Taiwan has been explored (Chang 2004), how its advertising content in various national editions differs in terms of its sexuality (Nelson and Paek 2005) and in terms of strategies and tactics (Nelson and Paek 2007) has been compared. The racial dynamics of representation in the magazine has been considered, with scholars making arguments about the ways in which whiteness is prioritised in various national editions of the magazine, for example, Indonesia (Saraswati 2010). How the magazine gives relationship advice has been studied (Gupta et al. 2008; Gill 2009), how it narrates women's sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s has been analysed (McMahon 1990), that the poses and postures adopted by the women featured in the magazine are similar to those shown in *Playboy* has been demonstrated (Krassas et al. 2001), and how it reproduces the deterministic sociobiological narratives of gender has been articulated (Hasinoff 2009; Saraceno and Tambling 2013). In addition, how audiences read and interpret the magazine has been explored (McCleneghan 2003; Donnelly 2008).

Alongside this breadth of research on *Cosmopolitan* magazine, some key perspectives on the cover as genre are worth considering in a little more depth, as context. As Caroline Kitch has noted, the "girl on the magazine cover" has a long legacy (Kitch 2001), and magazines have played a key role in constructing gendered stereotypes of women in American culture. Furthermore, as I have written about at some length, cover imagery on consumer magazines plays a key role in constructing and disseminating the core values of neoliberal consumer culture in the West, including individualised narratives of commodity acquisition, sexiness, and consumer self-hood (Iqani 2012b; McCracken 1993). Close-up portraits of the faces of

famous people or models on the covers of women's magazines can function as key resources in individual identity projects, signalled through the invitation to imagine the self, encoded in the intimate eye-contact of almost life-size portraits (Iqani 2012b, pp. 140–58). The texture and sensibility of glossiness on the magazine cover plays a key role in the creation of the idea of celebrity as well as the general desirability of mass market commodities (Iqani 2012b, pp. 82–102). Women's bodies and cars are similarly represented on the covers of men's magazines, in such a way that the smoothness of both types of bodywork contributes to a process of commodification (Iqani 2012a). These perspectives on the discursive work done by magazine covers shows that they can be theorised as one of the key sites in the consumer media economy. In many ways, the magazine cover stands in synecdoche for the entire media economy of consumer culture: it is at once an advert (for the magazine content itself, for the celebrity brands featured, for the commodities worn by the cover stars) and a site through which media owners sell the attention of their audiences on to advertisers. As an iconic genre of commercial media, the magazine cover remains relatively influential in popular culture, despite the rise of interactive digital media platforms. Indeed, recent research has shown that readers remain attracted to the glossy aesthetic of the magazine (Webb and Fulton 2019).

In the past ten years, social media sites have arguably become equally powerful sites for the communication of consumer values, practices, and identities. YouTube remains one of the most prolific and popular platforms through which young people can create and share content, often through video blogs or 'vlogs' in which a selfie-style of filming is central (Burgess and Green 2018). Instagram could be seen as the new "magazine" due to its unparalleled ability to curate and disseminate visual content and, indeed, it has been favoured as a platform for those who work in and consume fashion, art, and other forms of creative expression (Lee et al. 2015). Instagram is one of the most widely used social media platforms. At the time of writing, the platform claimed to have 1 billion active users. It is used not only by individuals sharing visual narratives of their lives, but by advertisers and corporations who use it as a platform for communicating their brands (Chen 2018). One of the key features of the rise of digital media and the broad uptake of social media platforms by so many is the rise of the selfie. One of the key uses to which social media are put is self-expression, and this often takes the form of literal imaging of the self: the selfie (Murray 2015). This can serve as a route to a new form of celebritydom, being "instafamous" (Marwick 2015). Selfie culture is, to an extent, produced by celebrities, for example, Kim Kardashian, who became famous partly through her prolific and sexy self-representation on social media (McClain 2013). Celebrities regularly share glamorous selfies as a mode of keeping an intimate sense of connection alive with their fans (Iqani 2016, pp. 160–92). An argument could be made that many selfies imitate the kind of glamorous portraiture seen on magazine covers, especially in

the highly stylised sexy selfies that young women (cis and trans) often create and share online.

The rise of selfie culture has been documented, in depth, by a blooming field of critical visual studies and media studies. Purportedly a photograph of a person taken by that person using a mobile smartphone, laptop computer, or another digital device, the selfie must be understood as both an object and practice, that is both a commodity form and a consumer practice (Iqani and Schroeder 2016). In terms of the former, the selfie needs to be seen as a thing that has a genealogy, linking it to other forms of everyday visual culture, such as the snapshot (Schroeder 2013). In terms of the latter, the selfie is a particular genre of visual communication that signals the participation of ordinary people in mainstream visual culture. Some scholars have argued that the selfie should be understood as an emancipatory form of communication, in that the person who is featured in the images is in charge of the framing, taking, and disseminating of that image. Indeed, selfies are being used by several marginalised groups to make statements about belonging and being (Frosh 2015; Nemer and Freeman 2015), including for example trans and queer individuals (Vivienne 2017) and refugees (Chouliaraki 2017). Arguably, the selfie can be understood neither as purely empowering nor as evidence of wholesale buy in to consumer culture (Kedzior and Allen 2016). With many scholars contributing to the debate on the moral positionality of the selfie within popular culture (Senft and Baym 2015; Thumim 2017; Cruz and Thornham 2015; Kuntsman 2017), what remains clear is that selfies have become an increasingly less controversial aspect of digital culture and consumer culture. Indeed, the question arises as to whether the selfie has become so "everyday" that it has been mainstreamed onto the cover of a magazine.

#### **3.** *Cosmopolitan***'s "First Ever Selfie Cover"**

The US edition of *Cosmopolitan* was first published in 1886 (Landers 2010, p. vii), and once revived by the vision of Helen Gurley Brown in the 1960s (Hauser 2016), quickly went on to become a global media brand. In South Africa, the title was published by Associated Magazines, owned and managed by the powerful Raphaely family. The South African edition of *Cosmopolitan* magazine was published from 1984 (Donnelly 2001, p. 5) and closed up shop in 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. True to the global brand values of "fun fearless female", it consistently produced content that spoke to the perceived interests of its target market: sex, fashion, careers, relationships, and beauty. In its 2019 advertising rate card, *Cosmopolitan* South Africa claimed a total audience of 1.9 million, and a combined social media following of 975,000. In 2017, it appointed, arguably, its first ever millennial editor,

Holly Meadows, a young White woman<sup>1</sup> with a degree from the University of Cape Town, who stated that her aim was to take the title "into the future" and integrate a digital sensibility into its brand positioning and content (Tennant 2017). One of the innovations that Meadows introduced was an issue dedicated to "influencers" and the first "influencer" edition was published in March 2018, featuring studio portraits of three chosen Instagram influencers, with customers able to choose a magazine featuring their favourite of the three. In 2019, the magazine published its second "influencer" issue in partnership with YouTube. According to the press release announcing this "historic" magazine edition, the cover features a selfie, a first for the brand: "On the magazine's March 2019 cover are local influencers Mihlali Ndamase, Nadia Jaftha and Jessica Van Heerden. *Cosmopolitan* editor Holly Meadows said she chose the three influencers because they are the most recognisable female talents on YouTube right now" (Associated Magazines 2019). The cover is framed as a collaboration between YouTube and *Cosmopolitan*. To give some sense of each of the influencer's reach, their followings on key social media platforms (at the time of writing) are summarised in Table 1. All three young women are notable in that they have gained fame and recognition through their creation of social media content, usually oriented around their social lives and consumption of commodities, such as fashion, make-up, hair treatments (which have historically been stereotyped as female and feminine but which are increasingly appealing to a broader spectrum of masculine, non-binary, and queer consumers). In a previous generation, they may have been termed "glamour models" or "socialites", but due to their social media presence, they are known as "influencers" in millennial culture.


**Table 1.** The social media reach of the three influencer cover models.

There is an emerging literature on influencers, with some key observations being made about the links between them and brand management (Booth and Matic 2011; Burns 2016; Uzuno ˘glu and Kip 2014; Veirman et al. 2017), cultural labour and value creation (Abidin 2017; Iqani 2019; Khamis et al. 2017), and gender (Abidin 2016). Some important writing has also mapped out the relationship

<sup>1</sup> Only a handful of Black women have been appointed as editor of *Cosmopolitan* South Africa, with Sbu Mpungose only serving nine months in the role in 2012 (as reported in Sowetan Live, 17 September 2012).

between young women and content creation on YouTube (Banet-Weiser 2017, 2012; Duffy 2017; Duffy and Hund 2015; Duffy and Pruchniewska 2017). As the image in question in this chapter shows, YouTube remains a key site through which millennial self-expression is operationalised. The public profiles of three of the women featured on the *Cosmopolitan* cover can be understood in relation to this literature, as all three have strong followings on YouTube and Instagram (though rather strangely, while Ndamase and Jaftha have strong Twitter followings, Van Heerden does not). their honour at being featured on the cover alongside the other two, expressing their gratitude for the recognition and collaboration, and tagging the *Cosmopolitan* SA

Instagram handle and the other two women.

**Figure 1.** A screenshot from the Instagram profile of one of the influencers featured in the selfie cover, Mihlali Ndamase. **Figure 1.** A screenshot from the Instagram profile of one of the influencers featured in the selfie cover, Mihlali Ndamase.

In terms of the composition of the image, the only thing that suggests that it is a selfie is the presence of the remote shutter release. In photography, there are multiple technologies available for taking self‐portraits, including timer settings that delay the shutter release, wireless remote shutter releases that can be easily hidden by the self‐portrait photographer, and even, more recently, digital cameras with sensor technologies that recognise hand gestures (Chu and Tanaka 2011). It is, therefore, significant that the team that assembled the cover selfie chose to use a cabled shutter release device. What the cable and the device in Ndamase's hand signifies is that it was she who made the decision about when to take the photograph, that she pushed the button, so to speak. Whether or not the cable and The cover image (see Figure 1) shows the three influencers clustered around a small white cube, with Ndamase in the centre, holding a remote shutter release attached to a cable. Ndamase leans forward with her hand on the cube, and the two other women, Jaftha and Van Heerden, are positioned slightly behind her, each holding up a hand with the palm facing the camera. All three are dressed in trendy, bold streetwear: Van Heerden in a houndstooth miniskirt and jacket with a bikini top underneath, Ndamase in an orange sports jacket and huge hoop earrings, and Jaftha in a gold lamé shirt and chequered trilby. While Ndamase grins delightedly, Van Heerden narrows her eyes and grimaces in punk style, and Jaftha

studies. And it is this agency that *Cosmo* accentuates in its promotional write up about the cover, that the "YouTube stars" are "taking (and calling) the shots, literally and figuratively" (Marcopolous 2019). But the *Cosmo* selfie, aside perhaps from the

scowls glamorously. All three influencers released the same image on their Instagram profiles simultaneously, presumably timed with the magazine's availability in stores, featuring slightly differently worded captions in which all enthuse about their honour at being featured on the cover alongside the other two, expressing their gratitude for the recognition and collaboration, and tagging the *Cosmopolitan* SA Instagram handle and the other two women.

In terms of the composition of the image, the only thing that suggests that it is a selfie is the presence of the remote shutter release. In photography, there are multiple technologies available for taking self-portraits, including timer settings that delay the shutter release, wireless remote shutter releases that can be easily hidden by the self-portrait photographer, and even, more recently, digital cameras with sensor technologies that recognise hand gestures (Chu and Tanaka 2011). It is, therefore, significant that the team that assembled the cover selfie chose to use a cabled shutter release device. What the cable and the device in Ndamase's hand signifies is that it was she who made the decision about when to take the photograph, that she pushed the button, so to speak. Whether or not the cable and shutter release device were simply props or were actually deployed by Ndamase as indicated in the image is not clear from any of the promotional material shared about the image. This agency—being both the subject of the photograph and the person who takes it—is at the heart of how selfies have been defined in critical cultural studies. And it is this agency that *Cosmo* accentuates in its promotional write up about the cover, that the "YouTube stars" are "taking (and calling) the shots, literally and figuratively" (Marcopolous 2019). But the *Cosmo* selfie, aside perhaps from the general sense of youthful fashionability and trendy defiance communicated in the postures, gestures, expressions, and outfits of the three influencers, carries few other indications of the selfie genre as it has been understood in the scholarship. Selfies have been largely defined as low-fi images, taken on smartphones or handheld devices in the flow of everyday life, and sharing a certain texture of the ordinary. For example, many selfies are taken in mirrors in bathrooms or even while seated on the toilet (hardly glamorous locations), on public transport, in the home after putting on make-up, or on social occasions with friends. By contrast, the *Cosmo* selfie is clearly taken in a studio setting, with a professional backdrop and lighting, and with professional stylists and make-up artists. In a "behind the scenes" YouTube video posted by van Heerden, the professional photography studio setup is documented, as well as the team of experts present. The *Cosmopolitan* image seems to be suggesting that the only thing that makes a selfie a selfie is that the person in the image is the one that pressed the shutter release, and that the inclusion of highly professional settings and strategies does not change this. As well as having been professionally produced, the image tells a story about how the discourse and aesthetic of the selfie has come to

take on new meanings, other than those already identified in the literature. It is to this thematic that I turn next.

#### **4. The Design of the Influencer Cover Selfie**

In true magazine cover style, the cover selfie is very glossy and glamorous. The three women in the *Cosmo* self-portrait are immaculately dressed and styled. They are wearing the latest fashions, each has carefully styled hair and perfect make-up, including conspicuous manicures. The textures of their clothes, skin, and hair communicate youth and stereotypical feminine beauty. We can see the texture of glossiness in operation in the magazine cover. Magazine covers are smooth, glossy objects; so too are the subjects featured on them. Of course, by virtue of having their images placed on the magazine cover, the message is that they are celebrities. The tagline "the influencer issue" boldly states the reason for their treatment as celebrities: by virtue of having achieved instafame, they are now being validated in the iconic media genre that signals celebrity status: the magazine cover. As such, the message is clear: being an influencer is a direct route to becoming a celebrity. A callout bubble promises that a feature inside the magazine will teach readers "how to make bank on insta"; that is, how to monetise social media profiles and become effective, and well-paid, online influencers. Interestingly, the text and image combine to create a new message about celebrity, as well as how both traditional and digital media interact in the project of celebritisation. Here, we see the magazine cover operating as a space in which consumer subjecthood is produced and validated. Successful self-promotion on social media can lead to mainstream validation on magazines, in television, and so on. While this route to visibility might promise to give marginalised people an equal chance at recognition (and the income that comes with it), in this specific image, we see instead neoliberal consumer culture succeeding in reproducing its values in multiple media sectors. While, on the one hand, the selfie is an organic media form, built by ordinary people from the ground up and used to stake a claim of being and belonging in visual culture, the self-portrait has also been a tool used by elites to communicate power. Indeed, in the rise of the selfie itself, commercial strategies and consumerist aesthetics have played a central role (consider the rise of Kim Kardashian, her fame almost entirely produced through sexy, glossy, self-representation online) (Kardashian West 2015). While some selfies are snapshots, in the everyday sense, especially in celebrity culture, selfies also play a central role in producing the glossy, glamorous aesthetic that communicates fame. Indeed, many "ordinary" women use various types of selfies to try to construct a glossy, glamorous, and hyperfeminine sensibility in their own personal social media narratives (Marwick 2015).

That the cover photograph features three women is key. As South Africa is a multicultural society with a history of racial oppression, the racial make-up of the

three women is important to note. Ndamase is Black African, Jaftha is Indian (in South Africa, a designation categorising citizens of South Asian descent), and Van Heerden is White. The "diversity" of the image more or less ends there, as all three women are young, feminine, beautiful, and slim. Notably, the lighting and postproduction of the image brings a very similar resonance to the skin tones of all three women. Jaftha and Van Heerden both wear their hair blonde and straight, though in different lengths, and Ndamase wears a long curly weave, scraped back from her face into a voluptuous ponytail. The choice of outfits is not typically heteronormative or hyperfeminine, with Jaftha's hat introducing a mildly androgynous feel, and Ndamase's tight shorts, sports bra, and gold hoop earrings suggesting an inner-city sporty atmosphere. Precisely because they are not wearing ballgowns or cocktail dresses, as is often the case on *Cosmo*, the three come across as youthful, hip, and irreverent, which represents online youth culture.

The typical aesthetic for the *Cosmopolitan* cover is of a single celebrity or model, usually cropped in a very similar way, at the hips or thigh and crown of the head, wearing a "sexy", revealing outfit, glamorously styled, and gazing out at the viewer making direct eye contact. Breaking with this tradition, the "selfie cover" features three woman in a carefully arranged group portrait. This mimics one of the key subgenres of the selfie—the group selfie, when one person in a group of friends uses the selfie function to capture everyone together, either simply with the arm outstretched or using a selfie-stick. As Jonathan Schroeder has argued, the use of group portraiture in commercial communication has a long history, stretching from the Dutch masters through to portraits of the community of creatives in Andy Warhol's factory (Schroeder 2008). In group portraits, the positioning of each subject is key, and usually carefully orchestrated to say something about their social standing and relationships to the others. Consider the famous group selfie of Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars in 2014 (Kedzior et al. 2016), and how it displayed the links between that year's A-list performers. As the most "powerful" influencer, in terms of the numbers of her followings on her various social media platforms, Ndamase is placed in the middle of the image and leans into its foreground and, crucially, is given the power (be it symbolic or actual) of taking the image through the shutter control. The other two influencers, in keeping with their slightly more modest reaches, are set slightly back from Ndamase, and through their hand gestures, collaborate in framing the shot. The effect is something like a portrait of a pop band, with the sense that Ndamase is the lead singer and Van Heerden and Jaftha the back-up singers. The message sent here is that in the project of monetising influence, numbers matter more than anything, and it is because of her superior reach to audiences that Ndamase is "in charge" of this image. It is nevertheless crucial that Ndamase is not featured singly in the cover image (as was the choice with the 2018 influencers featured), but that the three influencers share the space. This communicates something about the collaborative

and community aspects of social media, that influence and reach is built through tangible networks, both the technological networks of the internet that span the globe and the devices that connect, and the human networks of aspiration, status, and taste that connect people socially. These connections are hinted at by choice of a group portrait for the cover selfie and is echoed in the complimentary comments that each of the influencers wrote when posting the cover image. In this context, the critique of narcissism that is often levelled against selfies, especially when taken by young women, falls a bit flat, because of the support and camaraderie being portrayed in the group image and the ways in which it was shared by all the women in the image.

While the three influencers are "celebritised" by the cover, that is, validated as having sufficient fame, recognition, and beauty to be featured on the cover of one of the most popular magazines in the country, they too serve to validate the magazine's brand. In service of the goal of making the brand more digitally relevant and reaching an audience of young millennial readers, digital natives, it is increasingly urgent that mainstream media brands, especially those that were born in a pre-digital age, situate themselves as relevant to that audience. Drawing on the vernacular of the selfie, taking it for granted as something that young women and groups of friends do with their smartphones, possibly every day, *Cosmopolitan* is not only validating selfie culture but telling young women that the brand understands them and can speak for them. As such, there is a kind of branded symbiosis taking place in the image, not only between *Cosmopolitan* and YouTube, who collaborated on the "influencer" issue, but also between the individual brands of each "influencer" and the established media companies. Through the selfie cover, the brand of the magazine and the brands of the influencers are collaborating to promote one another on their respective platforms—the three young women offer *Cosmopolitan* exposure to their followers, and *Cosmopolitan* offers them exposure to their readers, helping both to build their followings and reach. Considering how classic media economics operates, the attention of audiences is the only really monetizable asset that any media brand can own.

#### **5. The Politics of the Commercial Appropriation of the Selfie**

By naming the image on the cover as a "selfie" in its promotional material, *Cosmopolitan* is explicitly signifying that it handed over representational power to the women in the picture. It is worth considering how much control the three women had over the image. As consummate self-representors, it would be amiss to assume that they were completely controlled by the magazine's production team. This said, it would be equally amiss to assume that they were fully in charge of every aspect of the image. The collaborative aspect of the image, that it was produced together by the influencers and the magazine, signalled by the handheld remote shutter release, suggests that there might have been an equal play of decision making

between both the subjects of the image and its producers. This particular selfie signals a wholesale buy-in to the commercial power of mainstream media and celebrity culture. It also represents the extent to which the taking of a selfie can be monetised and commoditised. In setting up the image, *Cosmopolitan* is producing what I will term a "professional selfie". A professional selfie can be understood to be a hybrid of the generic components of online, everyday visual self-expression and studio photography, and that seeks to mobilise the most powerful communicative aspects of each: the claim to authenticity of the former, and the glossy glamour of the latter. Of course, I am not suggesting that the image discussed in this paper is the first iteration of a professional selfie; I am simply using it to help delineate a new terminology for understanding the intersections of commercial culture and selfie aesthetics.

It would be incorrect to assume that the commercial application of the selfie, that is, putting one on the cover of a magazine, is a radical departure from selfie culture. Jonathan Schroeder has written about how the snapshot aesthetic has been appropriated by advertising that seeks to communicate a brand's sense of authenticity (Schroeder 2013); the same dynamic is arguably at play here. Selfies are more than snapshots that feature a moment in a person's life, they are also pieces of communication that, to an extent, build identity in personal brands. Many scholars have written about how the notion of self-branding is becoming central to the practices that young people undertake online (Gandini 2016; Khamis et al. 2017; Banet-Weiser 2012). From this perspective, the selfie is not a form of popular culture that has been appropriated by the powers of commerce, but it is a form of commercial imagery in its own right, and has been for some time, as Kim Kardashian has shown. Of course, this perspective is rooted in a very neoliberal conception of the self: as a sign of both identity and income, as well as a sign of both personal brand and profitability. These values have arguably become intensified in recent years, and with the rise of digital media, the forms of self-presentation that take place online are increasingly being linked to ideas about career prospects, marketability, and success (Dutta 2010). The image under discussion in this paper sums up, in some ways, the neoliberal narrative about success and how it is produced through individualised online self-representation. The three influencers featured had, long before the opportunity to model on the cover of *Cosmopolitan* magazine came along, decided to share stories and images about themselves online and find ways to monetise those narratives. As such, they are, in a sense, uber-successful neoliberal subjects who have cleverly and strategically used the opportunities presented by digital media platforms to forge media careers for themselves. Being on the *Cosmo* cover is a signal of them having "arrived", having succeeded in their content creation work and, thereby, having gained wide recognition. They already sold themselves through their personal social media platforms and video blogs and, arguably, there is little

difference between that and selling themselves on the cover of a magazine. As their effusive commentary on their Instagram posts of the cover reveals, all three consider the opportunity empowering. They say: "blessings on blessings" (Ndamase), "I'm so proud, what a privilege" (Jaftha), and "so proud WOW" (Van Heerden).

Of course, it is important to not read too much into the success and agency, both individual and collective, claimed by the image. As many writers critiquing post-feminist culture have articulated (Dosekun 2020; Gill 2007, 2008; Gill and Scharff 2011), while claims to consumer self-hood and individualistic achievement are prioritised by neoliberal culture, the extent to which women are truly liberated (be it economically or socially) by an inherently patriarchal economic system requires ongoing critique, especially when that so-called empowerment looks very similar to what used to be considered oppression (for example, when women are validated only when they have money, show their bodies, and act sexually permissive). While Ndamase, van Heerden, and Jaftha are all performing a particular narrative of personal success, materialistic beauty, and economic freedom in their group self-portrait, they also conform to many of the limiting narratives about those things that serve the power structures of consumer culture. While on the one hand, they are narrating how they achieved fame by being their authentic selves and gained a following through choosing when and how to represent their stories, lives, and personalities, on the other hand, an argument can be made that they were precisely successful at this project because they already conformed, to a significant extent, to a pre-determined idea of what a young, successful (cishet) woman looks like and how she acts. There is a deeply circular logic at play. *Cosmopolitan* chose these three influencers to be on their cover because, as the editor said, they have achieved recognition on YouTube. However, the kind of recognition that they have produced for themselves already fits very much with the *Cosmopolitan* brand image: a cursory look at the vlogs and Instagram profiles of each woman reveals a strong focus on make-up, clothing, socialising, parties, the easy, sexy display of their bodies, a strong orientation towards wealth as a life goal, and an unquestioned acceptance of heteronormative popular culture. These strategies fit directly with the *Cosmopolitan* brand of being fun and fearless, sexy and successful, career-oriented, and confident. What came first, the *Cosmopolitan* post-feminist brand, or the influencers' performance of the same values in their own personal brands? It is possible that the aspiring influencers, in forging their online personae and crafting their content, took reference from the many existing powerful consumerist and post-feminist discourses available in mainstream media culture, including of course, the influential *Cosmopolitan* brand.

Although it might be tempting to write the image off as yet another example of the exploitation of women by patriarchal culture through the performance of self-internalised forms of body work, management, and beauty required by consumer culture in order to be considered fierce, fun, and fearless (a *Cosmo* girl, in charge of

her career, her body, and her looks, but still sexy, pleasing to the heteronormative gaze, and a wholesale champion of market exchange), it is nevertheless important to take seriously the ways in which the three influencers have been able to exercise their agency. These can be read off the image in the collaborative sense of their playful participation in creating it together, as well as in their confident, even irreverent expressions, gestures, and postures. While they clearly had some say in their image (perhaps more than any cover model before them), they also were controlled by the styling, lighting, and postproduction processes that were implemented by the magazine itself, as well as by the discursive strategies of the *Cosmopolitan* brand.

All of this said, however, and no matter how lucrative being an influencer and making online content has been for each woman featured in the selfie cover, their particular financial and cultural empowerment needs to be considered in the bigger picture of the media economy. Powerful corporate media brands like *Cosmopolitan* magazine have a great deal more power and influence than aspiring video bloggers—at least for the time being. While there may emerge exceptions in the future—for example, should one of the influencers supersede the *Cosmopolitan* reach in their personal viewership and do a better job than *Cosmo* at creating content that young viewers and readers want to consume—for now, it is still the big media companies and brands to which the influencers aspire to gain access and validation. It is *Cosmopolitan* that, for now, has the greater reach in terms of audience and greater resources to maintain, and communicate with, that audience.

This chapter has shown how, through innovative partnerships across the online and offline realms, and between formal media institutions and self-made media entrepreneurs, the selfie has been mainstreamed into commercial magazine culture, creating a new genre, the "professional selfie". These can be used to build the brands of all parties involved, by reaching out to a millennial audience using its own vernacular. Although the selfie has been mainstreamed and professionalised, it is a very specific version of the selfie (both in content and form) that has achieved this crossover. By deploying strategies of glossiness and a post-feminist sensibility, the *Cosmo* selfie cover functions more like a magazine cover and less like a selfie, regardless of the fact that the person who pushed the shutter button was in the centre of the image. As such, future critical thinking about selfies will need to accommodate new ways of understanding how this mode of communication can be commoditised and appropriated by profit-oriented media actors.

#### **References**

Abidin, Crystal. 2016. 'Aren't These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?': Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity. *Social Media* + *Society* 2: 2056305116641342. [CrossRef]


© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## **Self-Image as Intervention: Travis Alabanza and the New Ontology of Portrait Photography**

#### **Ace Lehner**

**Abstract:** A close analysis of the Instagram feed of Black British, gender-non-conforming, trans-femme performance artist Travis Alabanza reveals their production of non-binary, trans-femme iconography via the social media platform Instagram as a timely and necessary intervention into contemporary culture. In self-imaging complex, expansive, and intersectional identity, Alabanza's oeuvre not only produces new visual exemplars, but constitutes an imperative and complex representation that defies the stereotypes and erasures of such constituencies produced by dominant culture, while simultaneously challenging our previously held conceptions of photography and self-portraiture. To understand the nuances and interventions of Alabanza's self-images, this chapter will model a trans-visual studies approach, in which methods of analysis are co-informed by the object of study. Alabanza's work unfixes the photograph, breaking open the space between looking at a surface of a picture and the person referenced by the image. Simultaneously, Alabanza's interest in surface is not superficial; the images seem to encourage us to view aesthetics as being about communicating, identity, play, performativity, and in discourse with numerous visualities and aesthetic languages, including gender, racialization, class, and subcultural affiliations.

#### **1. Introduction**

In an image posted on their Instagram feed, on 13 January 2020, Travis Alabanza wears a dark pinstriped blazer, open in the front over a lacey red and black bra and dark, high-waisted pinstriped suit bottoms (see Figure 1). Their hair is straight and long, a gold hoop earring catches the side light coming from what might be a nearby window; they lean back toward the bare white wall behind them in a slightly sultry pose, lips pursed, cat eyes looking directly at us through the picture plane.<sup>1</sup> Alabanza is mobilizing a sophisticated and sexy version of themself, a non-binary femme-ness unabashedly wearing a bra while having a slightly hairy chest. They take up the central location in the frame, cropped at the hips, with a small amount of negative space above their head, frontal facing in shallow pictorial space; the framing, frontality and composition of the image references the aesthetics of a long tradition

<sup>1</sup> Alabanza's appropriate pronouns are the singular uses of the pronouns they/them/theirs.

of Western portraiture, traceable back to the sixteenth century.<sup>2</sup> However, here, the aesthetics of the image-maker/subject are a radical intervention into the visual field. Rather than a cis Caucasian man self-imaging via entrenched art historical materials, Alabanza disrupts aesthetic and media-based hierarchies and traditions of self-portraiture.<sup>3</sup>

The ethos of Travis Alabanza's self-imaging praxis does not embody a desire to create positive visibility, but rather to be understood outside of current regimes of visualities. Moreover, while Alabanza lives and makes images in a location ideologically invested in the idea that *seeing is knowing*, Alabanza's self-image photographs are performed as intentional interventions into visual culture, and are challenging the very understanding of representation, portraiture and visual encounters.<sup>4</sup>

Trans self-image makers like Alabanza are invested in challenging how we have come to view and conceptualize representation and photography in the so-called "West." Alabanza's work unfixes the photograph, breaking open the space between looking at a surface of a picture and the person referenced by the image. Simultaneously, Alabanza's interest in surface is not superficial; the images seem to encourage us to view surface aesthetics as about communicating, identity, play, performativity, and in discourse with numerous visualities and aesthetic languages, including gender, racialization, class, and subcultural affiliations. The Instagram feed of Alabanza, in its production of non-binary, trans-femme iconography, presents a timely and necessary intervention into Western visual culture, bringing into being complex, expansive and intersectional identities while reworking Western concepts of photography and portraiture. Alabanza's oeuvre not only produces new visual exemplars, but their Instagram feed constitutes an imperative and complex representation that defies the stereotypes and erasures of such constituencies

<sup>2</sup> See my introductory chapter in this volume (Lehner 2021).

<sup>3</sup> This chapter aims to interrogate what Alabanza's self-images on social media are doing as an intervention in discourses photographic portraiture and identity representations. In this chapter, I will not focus extensively on the debates around selfies. I have traced these in the introduction of this book (Lehner 2021). I have also written more on the debates around self-portraiture and selfies in "A Multi-Dimensional Matrix of Visual Apprehension: The Gender-Non-Conforming Selfies of Alok Vaid-Menon," in *Trans Representations: Non-Binary Visual Theory in Contemporary Photography* (Lehner 2020) ProQuest ID: Lehner\_ucsc\_0036E\_12015. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5rn8jgp. For other sources on debates within selfies and self-portraiture, see (Cruz and Thornham 2015; Schlief 2004). Moreover, see (Murray 2015; Giroux 2015; Goldberg 2017; Gorichanaz 2019).

<sup>4</sup> It is important to note that the very idea of being able to create "positive visibility" is itself a misconception; representations can never remedy social issues and injustice, but rather are always bound up with the negotiation of identity. Many feminist scholars have made this point; see, for example, Solomon-Godeau (1991). Similarly, one could discuss this as a feminist practice of narcissism in conversation with what Amelia Jones has observed regarding the female [in this case femme] narcissist as being a threat to patriarchal systems as she (or they) makes the male viewer irrelevant as she (or they) need no confirmation from him of their "desirability." (Jones 1998).

produced by dominant culture, while simultaneously challenging our previously held conceptions of photography and self-portraiture.

**Figure 1.** Self-Image of Travis Alabanza on their Instagram feed, posted 13 January 2020. Source: Screen grab image courtesy of Ace Lehner and approved by Travis Alabanza via Instagram messaging exchange 21 December 2020. **Figure 1.** Self-Image of Travis Alabanza on their Instagram feed, posted 13 January 2020. Source: Screen grab image courtesy of Ace Lehner and approved by Travis Alabanza via Instagram messaging exchange 21 December 2020.

Trans self-image makers like Alabanza are invested in challenging how we have come to view

and conceptualize representation and photography in the so-called "West." Alabanza's work unfixes the photograph, breaking open the space between looking at a surface of a picture and the person referenced by the image. Simultaneously, Alabanza's interest in surface is not superficial; the images seem to encourage us to view surface aesthetics as about communicating, identity, play, performativity, and in discourse with numerous visualities and aesthetic languages, including gender, racialization, class, and subcultural affiliations. The Instagram feed of Alabanza, in its production of non-binary, trans-femme iconography, presents a timely and necessary intervention into Western visual culture, bringing into being complex, expansive and intersectional identities while reworking Western concepts of photography and portraiture. Alabanza's oeuvre not only produces new visual exemplars, but their Instagram feed constitutes an imperative and complex representation that defies the stereotypes and erasures of such constituencies produced by dominant culture, while simultaneously challenging our previously held conceptions of photography and selfportraiture. To understand the nuances and interventions of Alabanza's self-images, this chapter will model a trans visual studies approach, in which methods of analysis are co-informed by the object of study. Wherein I aim to attend to the specificity of Alabanza's self-imaging and undo essentialist ideas about interpreting work. In order to situate the discussion of Alabanza's self-images, I will briefly discuss key points in the representation of trans femmes in visual culture, the discursive framing of photography in the West, and the intersecting visually oppressive regimes of racialization and gender as bound up with representation and identity formation. I will then briefly situate Instagram as an extension of contemporary photographic art practices, and finally, I will attend to Alabanza's work as an intervention into the above-outlined areas.

#### To understand the nuances and interventions of Alabanza's self-images, this chapter will model a trans visual studies approach, in which methods of analysis are co-informed by the object of study. **2. Travis Alabanza**

**2. Travis Alabanza** 

as an intervention into the above-outlined areas.

Wherein I aim to attend to the specificity of Alabanza's self-imaging and undo essentialist ideas about interpreting work. In order to situate the discussion of Alabanza's self-images, I will briefly discuss key points in the representation of trans femmes in visual culture, the discursive framing of Predominantly known for their work in performance, Black British, non-binary, trans femme artist Travis Alabanza grew up in working-class Bristol, England,

photography in the West, and the intersecting visually oppressive regimes of racialization and gender

2

Predominantly known for their work in performance, Black British, non-binary, trans femme artist Travis Alabanza grew up in working-class Bristol, England, and is currently based in London,

and is currently based in London, active in the performance and theatre scenes there.<sup>5</sup> In 2017, Alabanza became the youngest recipient of the artist in residence at the Tate workshop program. They've performed in venues such as the ICA, the Roundhouse, and Barbican. Alabanza has toured throughout Europe and the United States in hundreds of venues (Minamore 2019; Pengelly 2019; Rasmussen 2019; Sanyang-Meek 2016).<sup>6</sup> Using the platform Instagram, Alabanza inserts radical aesthetics into the visual field, critically engaging in discourses of trans identity formations, photography, and representation. Blurring distinctions between self-portraiture and selfies, the use of Instagram by image-makers like Alabanza mobilizes the platform as an ever-evolving, self-curated solo exhibition of self-portraiture. This not only presents a challenge to how we think of and define portraiture and photographic practice, but also confounds the way in which stereotypes of marginalized constituencies are established. Rather than creating static and reductive representations that narrowly demonstrate essentialized ways of being an acceptable trans subject, Alabanza's self-representations present a diversity of potential ways of being non-binary and Black, while the specifics of Instagram also facilitate that they speak for themself.

Alabanza's self-images defy Western, binary gender aesthetic expectations, juxtaposing symbols assigned to the category of masculinity (the hairy chest or five o'clock shadow) with aesthetics assigned the role of femininity (red lips, floral crop top, and long hair). Standing shoulders-back, eyes meeting ours through the picture plane, Alabanza presents an empowered figure who is disinterested in performing within the frameworks of binary gender. Through their mobilization of self-image and text, Alabanza invites us to reconsider how we conceive of gender and trans identities, specifically taking on the narrative of trans folks that was established when media originally spectacularized trans people and psychiatric and medical industries pathologized them, and which has been perpetuated by mainstream media since. This history suggests that a trans person is trapped in the wrong one of two body types, and that they must transition as quickly as possible into the other to "feel like themself."<sup>7</sup> This reductive narrative reinvests in the gender binary and effectively

<sup>5</sup> Black British refers to British citizens of either Indigenous African Descent or of Black Afro-Caribbean (or Afro-Caribbean) background and includes people with mixed ancestry as well. This is a term by which Travis Alabanza self-identifies. Non-binary refers to someone who does not identify with the gender binary. Trans femme is used here to differentiate from trans woman. While trans woman as an identity category reinforces the conflation of gender and biology and is rooted in a rigidly bound category with a history of tensions, trans femme recognizes that gender is a free signifier not essentialized nor reductively attached to any gender or biological sex, but rather is about aesthetics, gestures and performances.

<sup>6</sup> Moreover, see Alabanza's website www.travisalabanza.co.uk.

<sup>7</sup> Part and parcel of perpetuating the binary gender system is the pervasive narrative popularly referred to as being "trapped in the wrong body." This idea has been prevalent since the initial pathologizing

erases all who exist outside of or between masculine and feminine. Alabanza's oeuvre prompts questions about how we assign gender qualities to aesthetics; not offering any easy answers, Alabanza uses the image caption to promote further reflection (see Figure 1):

When I told you I was not a man it was not just reacting to a feeling/your touch/an act of self-defiance but was also a choice in deciding that I am allowed to have ownership over my body and its story. People want a story that says "I always knew, it was innate, I could not live another way' and although true for some why must we have always known to now decide we want more? When I say trans, I mean escape.

Taken together, image and text propose that we need not belong in either one of two gender choices, that our genders may change any time in any way, and that their potential transformations are infinite. For Alabanza, trans is a way out of rigid identarian regimes, a praxis and a life free of living within preset boundaries. Both image and text push us to imagine other ways of being not already modeled around us.

A performer intimately aware of how their corporeality disrupts many peoples' realities, Alabanza mobilizes the aesthetics and possibilities of Instagram to image themself as an intervention into visual culture. With over 70.2 thousand followers around the globe, Alabanza's praxis on Instagram constitutes a compelling intervention into discourses of representation in conversation with contemporary photography discourse and the utilization of self-portraits to interrogate identity formations (see Figures 6 and 7). Alabanza's self-imaging praxis is not an isolated occurrence; it is part of a larger movement of trans folks self-imaging as intervention, a movement building on a long lineage of feminist, and queer photographic interventions.<sup>8</sup> However, perhaps the most contemporary movement that Alabanza's work discourses with is post-feminist photographic practices.

of trans people. The idea that a trans person is "trapped in the wrong body" comes from the medical establishment's requirements that in order to gain services, trans people had to articulate disgust at their current biology at the time of seeking services. This was established by the early formulation of trans identities as a diagnosable condition in need of a cure. See Stryker and Aizura (2013). See also: Prosser (1998), Preciado (2013), Ochoa (2014). Moreover, see: Tobia (2019), and "Galvanizing Aesthetics in the Trans-Masculine Visual Field: *Original Plumbing*|*Trans Male Quarterly,*" in Trans Representations: Non-Binary Visual Theory in Contemporary Photography, 2020 ProQuest ID: Lehner\_ucsc\_0036E\_12015. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5rn8jgp.

<sup>8</sup> Here, I position Alabanza's intervention in a lineage of feminist and queer artists, such as Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Renee Cox, Cathy Opie, Del la Grace Volcano, Juliana Huxtable, Tourmaline, Loren Cameron, Tammy Rae Carland, Nikki S. Lee, Kalup Linzy, Tina Takemoto, Mickalene Thomas, Zanele Muholi, Amrou Al-Hadhi, Tejal Shah, and Alok Vaid-Menon, to name a few. I also situate Alabanza in discourse with scholarly interventions dealing with debates in performance, intersectional identity and representation by the likes of Derek Conrad Murray (Murray 2016), Amelia Jones, José Esteban

In "Notes to Self: The Visual Culture of Selfies in the Age of Social Media," interdisciplinary visual studies scholar Derek Conrad Murray offers insightful theorizing of what he views as a post-feminist movement reflected in the ethos of the many young women self-imaging on social media. According to Murray, selfies of the post-feminist movement are characterized by a disinterest in taking on the problems of mainstream depictions of one's constituency, instead favoring self-imaging in ways that mobilize the self as sexual, empowered, and an intersectional subject engaging in imaging practices in discourse within one's community. Murray deploys the term "post-feminist" not to signal the triumph of feminism and thus the ending of its necessity, but rather to signal a shift in feminist priorities and strategies that move away from investments of Second and Third Wave feminisms (Murray 2015). He observes that contemporary image-makers working in post-feminist practice in photography engage in aesthetics and discourses that move beyond those of earlier feminist priorities. Positioning Alabanza's praxis in conversation with a post-feminist ethic pushes the limits of post-feminism. To include non-binary trans feminine self-imaging praxis as post-feminist forces the question of the ontology of feminism and unmoors it from outmoded essentialist ideas about gender oppression as rooted in a binary framework, thus calling into question the structures by which feminism is delimited. Post-feminist projects (and feminism) are not necessarily bound to (cis) women, but, instead, are invested in dismantling gender oppression, which can and should be done via frameworks that view gender not as a binary but as a system. The post-feminist ethic creates new aesthetics via viewing perspectives disinterested in debates about the "dominant male gaze" and investing in worlding projects (ibid.).<sup>9</sup>

Muñoz, Mel Chen (Chen 2017), C. Riley Snorton, micha cárdenas, Susan Stryker, Jack Halberstam, Che Gossett, Julia Serano, and Marcia Ochoa, to name a few.

<sup>9</sup> It must be stated plainly that not all selfies are engaged in post-feminist activities, in fact there is great diversity in how selfies are being mobilized and to essentialize them all under any rubric is methodologically flawed. Some will necessarily be invested in reifying problematics of dominant culture values, such as the neo-liberal capitalist, surveillance state, as argued by the likes of Henri Giroux in (Giroux 2015; McRobbie 2009). It must also be stated that, elsewhere, feminist media scholars such as Rosalind Gill have positioned post-feminism as a "sensibility" and a means of articulating a seemingly regressive practice engaged in by young women that involves self-surveillance, views femininity as a "bodily property" and can be observed in mainstream media in the post-feminist moment. See Rosalind Gill (2007). While other feminist cultural studies scholars such as Sara Banet-Weiser, and Catherine Rottenberg frame post-feminism as contingent on one's perspective, rife with paradoxes and bound up with neoliberalism in late capitalism. See Banet-Weiser et al. (2020). Also see (Bae 2011), (Hall and Rodriguez 2003) and (Holmlund 2005). It is imperative in this case to situate Alabanza's work in a lineage of feminist interventions in visual culture and indeed in line with a post-feminist ethos in order to keep the trajectory of feminism reflecting its alleged commitments, i.e., primarily working to dismantle the oppressive framework of gender inequity. For more on the imperatives of the trajectory of feminism see: (Doyle and Jones 2006) This is critical as, recently, feminist discourse has weaponized biology and transphobic notions of womanhood to malign trans folks and precisely why a trans feminist praxis like Alabanza's is relevant to the work of feminism. See (Serano 2007, 2013; Ahmed 2017).

Alabanza's oeuvre is actively disinterested in imaging subjects (themself or others) within normative visual culture standards. Post-feminist qualities are observable in Alabanza's practice, which barrows art historical traditions of portraiture (stance, framing, frontality), but inserts Black British, non-binary femininity as subject and artist, thus resisting art historically entrenched codes of imaging the cis feminine body as passive bodies for visual consumption, thus, intervening in the reductive binary and cis-gendered frameworks of portraiture. Alabanza deploys racialized and gendered aesthetics that rupture art historical expectations and are imaged for Alabanza's community.

#### **3. Representation, Racialization, Gender, and Trans Femmes in Visual Culture**

Representations are constituent of how expectations are set up regarding what corporealities are valued by a given culture at a specific point in time. Representations of trans femmes of color today in the Western context correspond with the erasure of and violence perpetrated against trans femmes of color in daily life. As Richard Dyer has insightfully argued, the psychological significance of stereotypes is that they outline the parameters of life for various constituencies at a given point in time in a particular location. (Dyer 1993). What trans femme stereotypes translate into when it comes to depicting trans people and trans characters in dominant culture is deeply fraught. Mainstream representations of trans people narrowly present acceptable ways of being trans, demonstrate which trans constituencies are impermissible, and side-line the majority of actual trans corporealities and experiences.

In the recent past, there has been an unprecedented number of visual culture examples of trans feminine people in Western European and North American contexts. While it is imperative to not overstate or overdetermine how this current wave of trans representations is shifting culture, it is necessary to study the aesthetics and implications of this moment. While mainstream visual culture, steeped in dominant ideologies and motivated by capitalist investments, has tended to image a narrow set of trans icons (reflecting investments that maintain allegiance to Western art history, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy), in other areas of trans visual culture, one can observe more complex representational strategies, unprecedented aesthetic practices and interventions that de-normativize dominant visual traditions, cultural ideologies, and capitalistic aims.

When encountering trans femmes of color in physical space, people have already been ideologically informed via visual culture on how to treat them based on stereotypic representations perpetuated in visual culture. This process is exponentially dangerous when the subject sits at an intersecting point on the visual matrixes of gender and racialization, which positions them as dually visually disrupting of cultural norms. This thinking is indebted to the legacy of Black feminist thought and actively interrogates intersectionality as it impacts trans and

non-binary lives. These observations specifically build on Black queer studies methods, which has pushed Kimberlé W. Crenshaw's scholarship on intersectionality to consider interconnectedness as it specifically relates to trans bodies and racialization (Crenshaw 2003).<sup>10</sup> Queer of color critiques have provided additional insightful revelations about the complexity of intersectionality as it applies to scholarship, culture and life. As E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson observe, identity politics have historically often reinforced hegemonic power structures and homosexuality has been disavowed in Black scholarship, while race has not been attended to in queer theory. Johnson and Henderson also argue that to ignore the way that multiple subject positions interconnect is theoretically naïve and politically dangerous. They urge scholars to consider intersectionality and to engage in the cross-pollination of theories in order to reflect upon the ways in which relying on reductive binary oppositions (for example, heterosexuality versus homosexuality) prevents scholars from critically examining the politics of representation (Johnson and Henderson 2005).

Embodying feminine aesthetics, trans femmes deploy aesthetics associated with those we have been trained to devalue and consume; but in embodying femmeness beyond cis femininity, they become objects of spectacular fascination. The heightened sexualization and exploitation of trans femmes in dominant visual culture is aligned with dominant cultural ideologies invested in dehumanizing them in ways that go beyond the exploitation of cis women. The coupling of both transphobia and misogyny directed at trans femmes objectifies them and their bodies, and demeans their personhood, positioning trans femmes as objects to be perused, exploited, and discarded. In her text *Trans-Misogyny Primer*, trans scholar and activist Julia Serano observes how mainstream culture mobilizes trans femmes in ways that depict them as sexualized bodies in a "titillating and lurid fashion" (Serano 2007, 2012). Transmisogyny has resulted in the "Sensationalization," and "demonization," of trans feminine people in mainstream media (Serano 2016). Transmisogyny has also led to the media's now decades-long depiction (starting with Christine Jorgenson) of "the trans revolution in lipstick and heels" (ibid., p 70). Moreover, the intersection of racism and gender oppression continues to create uneven, problematic, and often dangerous intersections perpetuated in visual culture.

<sup>10</sup> The term "intersectionality" is historically linked to the work of Black feminist scholars. The term itself can be traced to Kimberlé Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality, which specifically deals with the study of how different power structures interact in the lives of minorities, specifically Black women. For more information, see (Crenshaw 2003). To hear Crenshaw speaking and to contextualize the critical emergence of intersectionality that comes out of the application of Black feminism to antidiscrimination law, see (Crenshaw 2014). For more on intersectionality and its roots in Black feminist thought, see (Hancock 2016; Collins and Bilge 2016; Collins 2009; May 2015; Moraga and Anzaldúa 2015). Numerous trans and queer scholars have taken up issues in intersectionality as applicable to trans subjectivities, including the likes of Mel Chen (2017), Jack Halberstam, C. Riley Snorton, Kai M. Green, Treva Ellison, and others.

Caucasian women imaged within this narrow aesthetic.11

as regulating apparatus. Snorton sees Caitlin Jenner (see Figure 2) in an established canon of trans representations traceable to the first widely celebrated trans woman to appear in visual culture— Christine Jorgensen (see Figure 3). Snorton observes that the canonization of Jorgensen as the "good transsexual" set up a framework in which Caucasian trans women gained an "acceptable subject position," contingent on their Caucasian-ness and their commitment to embodying and reflecting narrowly prescribed cultural norms associated with Caucasian womanhood (Snorton 2017, pp. 140– 43)—tropes that are observable in the multiple visual examples we see today of Caitlyn Jenner: affluence, passivity, inviting the gaze, and being Caucasian. Snorton furthers that it was through "whiteness" that trans women were "sanitized" in dominant culture and thus became visible. Snorton also suggests that, in making a narrow fraction of trans femmes acceptable via the whitewashed and rigidly bound gender category, the iconizing of Jorgenson set up a mold against which other trans femmes would be compared (Snorton 2017). Those who did not reflect Jorgenson's precedent lay outside the bounds of acceptable trans embodiment, either due to gender beyond the binary or due to racial appearance other than Caucasian. It must be stated plainly that Jorgensen herself was already repeating entrenched raced and gendered tropes of acceptance. One needs only to look back at the history of portraiture and visual culture in the West and view the lineage of

**Figure 2.** Behind-the-scenes footage of Jenner's photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz, as aired on *I Am Cait,* for her iconic *Vanity Fair* cover story, June of 2015. Source: Screen-grab courtesy of Ace Lehner. **Figure 2.** Behind-the-scenes footage of Jenner's photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz, as aired on *I Am Cait*, for her iconic *Vanity Fair* cover story, June of 2015. Source: Screen-grab courtesy of Ace Lehner.

7 11 On the topic of decolonizing gender and its racist implications, see (Carter 2007; Schuller 2018; Somerville 2000). Mainstream visibility for some trans folks comes at the expense of others. Representations of trans femmes in mainstream culture promote specific "acceptable" ways of appearing as trans in the world, while sanctioning acts of aggression toward those who fail to replicate these representations (Cárdenas 2017; Griffin-Gracy et al. 2017; Snorton 2017). Repeatedly positioning trans femmes like Caitlin Jenner (see Figure 2) as the pinnacle of "trans success" reflects what micha cárdenas has suggested is the incorporation of trans folks who uphold neoliberal agendas and ideologies while keeping other trans folks out of public view (Cárdenas 2017, p. 173). In writing about contemporary U.S. culture and the increasing inclusion of queerness in mainstream media, Jasbir Puar observes, "these fleeting invitations into nationalism indicate that U.S. nation-state formations, historically reliant on heteronormative ideologies, are now accompanied by—to use Lisa Duggan's term—homonormative ideologies" that produce and perpetuate essentialized and narrow nationalist ideals of race, class, and gender (Puar 2007). Bringing these observations into conversation with the insights of C. Riley Snorton reveals that not only is the binary gender matrix regulating lives and representations, but its intersection with racialization is always necessarily invoked. *In Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity*, Snorton traces the interconnections between racism and gender as regulating apparatus. Snorton sees Caitlin Jenner (see Figure 2) in an established canon of trans representations traceable to the first widely celebrated trans woman to appear in visual culture—Christine Jorgensen (see Figure 3). Snorton observes that the canonization of Jorgensen as the "good transsexual" set up a framework in which Caucasian trans women gained an "acceptable subject position," contingent on their Caucasian-ness and their commitment to

embodying and reflecting narrowly prescribed cultural norms associated with Caucasian womanhood (Snorton 2017, pp. 140–43)—tropes that are observable in the multiple visual examples we see today of Caitlyn Jenner: affluence, passivity, inviting the gaze, and being Caucasian. Snorton furthers that it was through "whiteness" that trans women were "sanitized" in dominant culture and thus became visible. Snorton also suggests that, in making a narrow fraction of trans femmes acceptable via the whitewashed and rigidly bound gender category, the iconizing of Jorgenson set up a mold against which other trans femmes would be compared (Snorton 2017). Those who did not reflect Jorgenson's precedent lay outside the bounds of acceptable trans embodiment, either due to gender beyond the binary or due to racial appearance other than Caucasian. It must be stated plainly that Jorgensen herself was already repeating entrenched raced and gendered tropes of acceptance. One needs only to look back at the history of portraiture and visual culture in the West and view the lineage of Caucasian women imaged within this narrow aesthetic.<sup>11</sup>

**Figure 3.** Image of Christine Jorgenson, the world's first trans celebrity, from Susan Stryker's film *Christine in the Cutting Room.* Source: Screen-grab courtesy of Ace Lehner. Inseparably, when depicted in mainstream culture (if at all), trans femmes of color are overwhelmingly deployed as working in dangerous professions, marginally housed, and often **Figure 3.** Image of Christine Jorgenson, the world's first trans celebrity, from Susan Stryker's film *Christine in the Cutting Room*. Source: Screen-grab courtesy of Ace Lehner.

victims of sexual assault and various hate crimes. These stereotypic caricatures reflect mainstream cultural beliefs about trans women of color, demonstrating trans women of color as only ever tragic, unfulfilled victims. A particularly poignant version of this perpetuated, racist, transphobic trope came in the form of the feature film *Tangerine* (2015).12 Lauded for starring two trans women of color as the protagonists, *Tangerine* has been the most widely popular representation of trans women of color in mainstream media in the recent past.13 The two protagonists, Sin-Dee Rella and Alexandra, are played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, Inseparably, when depicted in mainstream culture (if at all), trans femmes of color are overwhelmingly deployed as working in dangerous professions, marginally housed, and often victims of sexual assault and various hate crimes. These stereotypic caricatures reflect mainstream cultural beliefs about trans women

both African American trans women. Casting actual trans women of color to play starring roles -not cis men as is often the problematic practice in cinema as observable in *Dallas Buyers Club*, 2013 and

circulated tagline flippantly reads "A hooker tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching

12 There is an argument to be made here that links the technology of the iPhone to trans femme representations. Low budget and consumer-grade technologies are being to image trans and non-binary people rather than the high-quality technology and canonical photographer that was used to produce Caitlin Jenner's likeness

for the cover of *Vanity Fair*.

8

13 Other notable mainstream representations of trans femmes of color include Neil Jordan and Stephen Woolley's *The Crying Game,* from 1992, and the appearance of Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset in Jenji Kohan's *Orange Is the New Black* from 2013–2019, wherein trans femmes of color are also framed as tragic, and criminal.

the *Danish Girl*, 2015 (Friess 2014; Lees 2014; Puchko 2015)- the characters and plot of the film reinforce and reify racist, transphobic expectations, and stereotypes about trans women of color, being incarcerated, violent, and engaged in unlawful activities, to name a few (see Figures 4 and 5). Both this promotional rhetoric and the plot of the movie forward the notion that tragic and tumultuous <sup>11</sup> On the topic of decolonizing gender and its racist implications, see (Carter 2007; Schuller 2018; Somerville 2000).

of color, demonstrating trans women of color as only ever tragic, unfulfilled victims. A particularly poignant version of this perpetuated, racist, transphobic trope came in the form of the feature film *Tangerine* (2015).<sup>12</sup>

Lauded for starring two trans women of color as the protagonists, *Tangerine* has been the most widely popular representation of trans women of color in mainstream media in the recent past.<sup>13</sup> The two protagonists, Sin-Dee Rella and Alexandra, are played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, both African American trans women. Casting actual trans women of color to play starring roles -not cis men as is often the problematic practice in cinema as observable in *Dallas Buyers Club*, 2013 and the *Danish Girl*, 2015 (Friess 2014; Lees 2014; Puchko 2015)- the characters and plot of the film reinforce and reify racist, transphobic expectations, and stereotypes about trans women of color, being incarcerated, violent, and engaged in unlawful activities, to name a few (see Figures 4 and 5). Both the promotional rhetoric and the plot of the movie forward the notion that tragic and tumultuous trajectories are to be expected of trans femmes of color, and create a narrative that makes light of the hardships that they face. The protagonists are both sex workers. Sin-Dee Rella has just been released from jail to find her pimp boyfriend cheating on her with a cisgender woman, and the movie's widely circulated tagline flippantly reads "A hooker tears through Tinseltown on Christmas Eve searching for the pimp who broke her heart."<sup>14</sup> Writing about the film, Morgan Collado observes, "trans women of color are almost always seen as objects to be controlled, held and exploited" (Collado 2015). Such mobilizations are reminiscent of colonial anthropological photographs framing colonized people as less than human, and thus deserving ill treatment (Marien 2015).<sup>15</sup> At first glance, *Tangerine* seems to break through this paradigm in forwarding trans women of color

<sup>12</sup> There is an argument to be made here that links the technology of the iPhone to trans femme representations. Low budget and consumer-grade technologies are being used to image trans and non-binary people rather than the high-quality technology and canonical photographer that was used to produce Caitlin Jenner's likeness for the cover of *Vanity Fair*.

<sup>13</sup> Other notable mainstream representations of trans femmes of color include Neil Jordan and Stephen Woolley's *The Crying Game*, from 1992, and the appearance of Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset in Jenji Kohan's *Orange Is the New Black* from 2013–2019, wherein trans femmes of color are also framed as tragic, and criminal.

<sup>14</sup> This catchphrase was printed on the promotional posters for the movie as well as appearing in publications for the film. It can be seen as the tag line on the film's IMDB page here: https: //www.imdb.com/title/tt03824458/.

<sup>15</sup> Notable contemporary intersectional feminist photographers like Carrie Mae Weems and Pushpumala N. Have used photography to speak back to these damaging photographic traditions, particularly in Weems' project *From Here I Saw What Happened, and I Cried* (1995); see (Weems 2000). Moreover, see the artist's website http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/from-here.html; also see Pushpumala N.'s *From The Ethnographic Series Native Women of South India: Manners & Customs*, 2000–2004. See Saatchi Gallery site https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/pushpamala\_n.htm.

as the stars of the film, but on further assessment, the representations mobilized by *Tangerine* shore up transphobic, racist perceptions about trans women of color.<sup>16</sup>

Alexander Weheliye's scholarship on the complex interconnectedness of violence, racialization, and corporeality proves instructive in light of the specificity of visual culture, life, and the ideological processes of racialization. Weheliye fervently urges that race be viewed as a socio-political relation and not assumed to be a de-politicized visual descriptor. Weheliye is concerned with the ways that visible human difference has been considered in Black studies to better understand the political, economic, and social exploitation of noticeable human differences. Weheliye's conception of "hieroglyphics of the flesh" (Weheliye 2014) mark and include some bodies in the realm of the human, based on the aesthetics of their corporeality, while also demarking other bodies based on their aesthetics as outside the realm of the human (ibid.).<sup>17</sup> Weheliye's articulation of the process of racialization is crucial, when it comes to the relationship between visual culture and real-life encounters with trans femmes of color. His formulation highlights how this active process of valuation is linked to the physiology of individuals. It ideologically sutures culturally specific concepts of humanity to constituencies as necessarily tied to visual appearance. Racial assemblages rely on stereotypes, to ultimately naturalize the expulsion of some from the category of human. This visual and cultural process works to sediment racializing assemblages into political relations, normalizing racism, and racial injustice. Racializing assemblages, however, rely on the permanent fixing of identification to the body (ibid.). The use of Weheliye's concept of difference as attached to the body is informative in thinking through the political and social situation surrounding trans women and trans femmes of color. Weheliye's insights help to explain the ideological suturing of values to people based on essentialisms about corporeal aesthetics and why such stereotypes of trans femmes of color persist in order to make the oppression of trans femmes of color appear to be natural and expected.

<sup>16</sup> Not insignificantly, the film was lauded as well as being entirely shot on smart phones (the same technology that selfies are made with), but the image maker in this case was a cis white man and the final venue was the film-making circuit.

<sup>17</sup> Redefining how we view processes of identification and racialization, Alexander G. Weheliye writes about alternative ways of thinking about race as racialized assemblages, the politics of which Weheliye argues are implicated in global power structures, and should be understood as being defined by intersections of neoliberal capitalism, racism, settler colonialism, immigration, and imperialism. He states further that if we want to understand and abolish our extremely uneven global power structures, that we need to challenge the creation and maintenance of systems of domination, criminalization, exploitation, and violence. Moreover, we must see how all of this is predicated on racial, gender, sexual, and political inequities.

for the pimp who broke her heart."14 Writing about the film, Morgan Collado observes, "trans women of color are almost always seen as objects to be controlled, held and exploited" (Collado 2015). Such mobilizations are reminiscent of colonial anthropological photographs framing colonized people as less than human, and thus deserving ill treatment (Marien 2015).15 At first glance, *Tangerine* seems to break through this paradigm in forwarding trans women of color as the stars of the film, but on further assessment, the representations mobilized by *Tangerine* shore up transphobic, racist

for the pimp who broke her heart."14 Writing about the film, Morgan Collado observes, "trans women of color are almost always seen as objects to be controlled, held and exploited" (Collado 2015). Such mobilizations are reminiscent of colonial anthropological photographs framing colonized people as less than human, and thus deserving ill treatment (Marien 2015).15 At first glance, *Tangerine* seems to break through this paradigm in forwarding trans women of color as the stars of the film, but on further assessment, the representations mobilized by *Tangerine* shore up transphobic, racist

perceptions about trans women of color.16

perceptions about trans women of color.16

**Figure 4.** Alexandra, played by Mya Taylor, engaging in sex work. Source: Screen-grab of film courtesy of Ace Lehner. **Figure 4.** Alexandra, played by Mya Taylor, engaging in sex work. Source: Screen-grab of film courtesy of Ace Lehner. **Figure 4.** Alexandra, played by Mya Taylor, engaging in sex work. Source: Screen-grab of film courtesy of Ace Lehner.

14 This catchphrase was printed on the promotional posters for the movie as well as appearing in publications **Figure 5.** Sin-Dee Rella (played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) fighting with the woman she discovered her boyfriend to be cheating with. Source: Screen-grab courtesy of Ace Lehner. **Figure 5.** Sin-Dee Rella (played by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) fighting with the woman she discovered her boyfriend to be cheating with. Source: Screen-grab courtesy of Ace Lehner.

for the film. It can be seen as the tag line on the film's IMDB page here:

9 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt03824458/. 15 Notable contemporary intersectional feminist photographers like Carrie Mae Weems and Pushpumala N. Have used photography to speak back to these damaging photographic traditions, particularly in Weems' project *From Here I Saw What Happened, and I Cried* (1995); see (Weems 2000). Moreover, see the artist's website http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/from-here.html; also see Pushpumala N.'s *From The Ethnographic Series Native Women of South India: Manners & Customs,* 2000–2004. See Saatchi Gallery site https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/pushpamala\_n.htm. 16 Not insignificantly, the film was lauded as well as being entirely shot on smart phones (the same technology that selfies are made with), but the image maker in this case was a cis white man and the final venue was the film-making circuit. 14 This catchphrase was printed on the promotional posters for the movie as well as appearing in publications for the film. It can be seen as the tag line on the film's IMDB page here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt03824458/. 15 Notable contemporary intersectional feminist photographers like Carrie Mae Weems and Pushpumala N. Have used photography to speak back to these damaging photographic traditions, particularly in Weems' project *From Here I Saw What Happened, and I Cried* (1995); see (Weems 2000). Moreover, see the artist's website http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/from-here.html; also see Pushpumala N.'s *From The Ethnographic Series Native Women of South India: Manners & Customs,* 2000–2004. See Saatchi Gallery site https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/pushpamala\_n.htm. 16 Not insignificantly, the film was lauded as well as being entirely shot on smart phones (the same technology One cannot fully understand and articulate the spectrum of how racialization is enmeshed with visual culture unless one considers how gender regulation is enacted. For, as race is culturally constructed and visually maintained, so too is gender. When trans femmes of color like Alabanza present gender options beyond the narrowly prescribed iteration of binary gender, these performances and corporealities become living examples of how binary gender is unable to contain us. Often, rather than viewed as liberatory for us all, trans people whose genders disrupt binary systems are met with violence, enacted by those who seek to keep intact the binary gender system.

9 that selfies are made with), but the image maker in this case was a cis white man and the final venue was the film-making circuit. Judith Butler's research investigating regulatory practices that govern gender and culturally intelligible notions of identity is particularly useful here. Her scholarship reveals that some identities must not exist in order for the system of gender to

exist. For example, she writes, identities where "gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not 'follow' from either sex or gender," (Butler 2006, p. 24) threaten to expose limits of the regulatory system (ibid. 2004, pp. 67, 42). Those who live outside the domain of the matrix, she articulates as abject, and describes these lives as "unlivable" (Butler 1993). Butler sees the cultural compulsion to maintain a "heterosexual imperative" as enabling specific sexed identifications and disavowing others. She calls this phenomenon an exclusionary matrix (ibid.).<sup>18</sup> If one sees the matrix of gender historically and currently dominating Western ideology as binary and invested in cis normativity, then clearly those folks making other gender options visible cannot co-exist with the binary gender matrix. For the binary sex/gender system to remain essentialized, collapsed, and intact, those whose identities make apparent other gendered options must be punished or made examples of—-as offenders of the system. This is observable in visual culture: we see trans subjects who most fully reflect dominant cultural ideologies being marginally incorporated (i.e., Jorgenson and Jenner), while subjects existing too radically outside sanctioned genders are depicted as not only expendable but necessarily eradicateable, as exemplified by the countless acts of violence and aggression perpetrated against trans femmes and trans women of color, and observable in mainstream visual culture in films like *Tangerine.* The interconnection of visual culture and how it reflects and structures cultural ideologies and expectations about who is valued in society is particularly volatile concerning representations and the lives of trans femmes of color. The total number of trans femmes of color whose lives were lost in hate crimes in 2020 surpassed that of 2019, only half way through the year (NCTE 2020; Aspergen 2020).

Alongside the neoliberal incorporation of Caucasian, cis-invested trans women like Jenner, there has also been the incorporating of token trans women of color, perhaps most notably Laverne Cox. What this inclusion has provoked adds to the cultural reactions informed by narrow expectations of who is a permissible trans subject. Trans femme of color and longtime activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy notes that the hypervisibility of African American trans femme actress Laverne Cox has, in many ways, led to increased violence perpetrated against other trans femmes of color. Griffin-Gracy suggests that because Cox is presumably unreachable to most, racist, transphobic aggressors turn their acts of violence against the trans folks who

<sup>18</sup> Butler's personal situatedness and allegiance to philosophy and semiotics frame her argument in that she roots her observations in the way that these practices are played out in language. This is interesting, but more fitting for this project is to apply visual culture as a means of applying Butler's observations rather than language. Butler observes that, via language, identities are brought into being, while at the same time, also inscribing us into discourses of gender and sex. Thus, naming delimits but also reinforces the norm while granting the quality of humanness. Significantly in this text, Butler observes that gender is a historical category and terms like masculine and feminine are notoriously changeable and contingent on time and place.

come into their proximity. Griffin-Gracy notes that femme people, in general, are subjected to heightened social regulation (Griffin-Gracy et al. 2017). <sup>19</sup> Griffin-Gracy's insights about the regulation and regimentation of femmes dovetail with micha cárdenas' argument that "the increased mainstream visibility of transgender people has brought about solidification of who is an acceptable trans person and who is disposable"; " now more than ever," Cárdenas writes, "it is evident that visibility is a trap" (Cárdenas 2017, p. 70). To understand the complexity of the "trap" of visibility politics, it is necessary to investigate the ideological framing of the ontology of photographs.

#### **4. A Brief History of the Discursive Framing of Photography**

*Tangerine* was praised for being shot entirely on an iPhone 5S, the high-quality photographic technology of a consumer-grade mobile camera phone (Newton 2015; Sharf 2017; Erbland 2018). Not only did *Tangerine* reflect dominant cultural values rooted in a legacy of transphobia and racism, but it did so via a specific discursively framed ontology of photography. The conceptual framing of portrait photographs in locations descended from the colonial project, by and large, maintain the ideological apparatus that outlines lens-based images as necessarily able to transmit "truth," (Sekula 1986; Tagg 1993; Solomon-Godeau 1991; Berger and Dyer 2013; Berger 1990; Sontag 2001), or as Snorton has argued, "reality is sutured to the privileging of sight" (Snorton 2017, p. 140). This ideologically constructed and upheld belief has been attached to photography since its inception in the Western context and has facilitated photography's deployment as an apparatus of cultural ideology (Batchen 1999; Berger 2005; Solomon-Godeau 1991; Woodall 1997). The conceptual flattening of the space between the image and the referent is crucial in upholding colonial ideologies. The very conception of photographs at the inception of the media in the mid-1800s was deeply enmeshed with the period's dominant ideologies, invested in the colonial project, and hinged upon upholding the binary opposition that positioned Caucasian masculinities as the pinnacle humanity (ibid.). Jack Halberstam has observed that in the colonial project, binary oppositions were established precisely to facilitate the demarcation of others as "knowable" or "visible", only in order to degrade and dehumanize them (Halberstam 2018, pp. 6–7).

Since its inception in the West, photography has been viewed as an objective recorder of the world. Moreover, we know (as pointed out by many photography scholars, perhaps most extensively by John Tagg) that photography is highly subjective

<sup>19</sup> Griffin-Gracey's interlocutor CeCe McDonald points out that she herself does not readily fit the narrow prescription of what a trans femme should be and look like. For more on CeCe McDonald, see (Erdely 2014; Lockett 2016; McDonald 2014; Qian 2017).

(Tagg 1993). There is still a deep interconnection between viewing lens-based images and a culturally perpetuated belief in these images as somehow factual. The ideological construction to photography in the Western context has fixed ideas of indexicality, evidence, and authenticity to pictures. Yet, photographs are always about power differentials, highly fabricated, and situational. The discursive construction of photographs via this framing sets up a belief about their ontology that perpetuates what Tagg has referred to as the photographs "regime of truth" (Tagg 1993). In other words, photographs are part of constructing our collective reality. Since the inception of the media, they have been mobilized as instructive tools of disseminating cultural ideology often believed simply to be information (Sontag 2001; Sekula 1986; Solomon-Godeau 1991; Trachtenberg 1991; Mitchell 1992).

Photographer and visual culture theorist Allan Sekula poignantly argued that, while pictures are not actual representations of the lived world, the cultural belief in the truth value of photography makes most people consider photographs "congruent with knowledge in general" (Sekula 1986, p. 56). In "The Body and the Archive" (1986), Sekula traces several ways in which bodies have not only been symbolically but physically possessed. He traces some of the histories of photography through the trajectory of physiognomy and phrenology, as well as police use of photography to reinforce racial and class hierarchies (ibid., pp. 10–11, 51–56).<sup>20</sup> Sekula writes: "the archive [of police photographs] could provide a standard physiognomic gauge of the criminal, could assign each criminal body a relative and quantitative position within a larger ensemble" (Ibid. p. 17). Sekula also contends that racist classification or physiognomy is an impulse in photography that is difficult to repress (Ibid. p. 62). The cultural belief in the "truth value" of photography becomes particularly powerful when dealing with images of people. Elaborating on this issue, Abigail Solomon-Godeau writes that "photography, a medium which by virtue of its supposed transparency, truth and naturalism have been an especially potent purveyor of cultural ideology—particularly the ideology of gender" (Solomon-Godeau 1991, p. 257).

Portraits are products of the people who make them, discursively framed and understood via the viewer's highly situated perspective. Portraits are always enmeshed with the ideologies of the image-maker and the viewer. In particular, photographic self-portraits are deeply bound with the cultural belief that the image reveals some inner workings of the subject (Bright 2011, 2015). Via the conception

<sup>20</sup> Physiognomy is generally understood as the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially one's face. Sekula describes at length the racist underpinnings and evolutionist tendencies of this assessment. Phrenology is generally described as what is known and understood to be a racist pseudoscience that once believed a person's skull could determine their character.

of photography as indexical and ascribing knowledge to images, dominant cultural groups can assign themselves a higher value than those that look different from them that they would like to oppress (Jones 2012; Halberstam 2018; Weheliye 2014).

#### **5. Photography Now**

In recent decades, artists have been increasingly interested in photography, and photographers have turned to portraiture for its sophisticated ability to rework concepts behind representation, to engage in different types of power dynamics, and to explore self and identity, both critically and intimately (Bright 2011, 2015). Conceptual art photography purposefully tries to look de-skilled, emphasizing what or who is imaged rather than the technology through which the subject is pictured. Such works often call attention to the very ontological contradictions of pictures and highlight the interconnection between photographs, performativity, and indexicality (Cotton 2004. Photography scholar Charlotte Cotton observes that "the use of seemingly unskilled photography is an intentional device that signals the intimacy of the relationship between the photographer and his or her subject" (Ibid., p. 137).

A mashup of "Instant Camera "and "telegram," Instagram (also known as IG, Insta, or "the gram") is a free photography and video-sharing social media platform launched in 2010; it remains the fourth most downloaded application of the 2010s (Miller 2019).<sup>21</sup> Designed to be used on smartphones and consisting of scrollable feeds of images, Instagram enables users to create endless streams of images to be shared instantaneously. Connecting on Instagram is primarily based on liking other people's images, and communication is facilitated by the ability to comment on images as well as "heart" them. Key features include the user's ability to post images to their feed, scroll images posted by others, and search for images by their hashtags, such as #trans #selfie or #blacklivesmatter, to bring up images tagged with the hashtag in descending chronological order. From its beginning and still true a decade later, the emphasis of Instagram is images. Positioning images as primary forms of communication makes Instagram an integral component of visual culture, as part of contemporary art and art history, and facilitates interventions into photographic imaging practices and discourse.

While initially the interventions that Instagram users make may seem a radical break with art history, they sit in a long lineage of photographic imaging practices are deeply bound to art historical aesthetics and often build on a legacy of intersectional feminist, queer praxis of self-imaging as intervention (whether intentionally or not).

<sup>21</sup> Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in San Francisco CA; the social media application has been owned by Facebook since 2012.

Considering the complex history of photographic portraiture, it should come as no surprise that, as photography scholar Susan Bright has observed, "the deliberately ambiguous strategy of 'performed' portraiture is just one of many approaches that artists have adopted to deconstruct and question what a portrait can do and how it functions" (Bright 2011, p. 21). Following Bright's thinking, we can view Travis Alabanza's praxis as engaging in a politics of representation invested in challenging the seeming "truth value" of the photograph in efforts to deconstruct the photograph's ability to create objects out of subjects, while also challenging the cultural belief that we can visually assign people values based on their corporealities.

#### **6. Alabanza's Insta-Interventions**

The aesthetics of Instagram as a platform present their viewer/user with the options of viewing one image after another, in a linear top-down feed, or of perusing a set of images in several square pictures across and a variable number down (depending on the size of one's device). The frame of the viewing device almost always contains another partial image (or images) and text. Even on the few occasions that the device frames a solo image, the understanding of the feeds' function and interactivity as continually scrollable suggests ever more images to peruse. By its very design, Instagram lends itself to the production of multiple versions of oneself, a constantly shifting representation of the image-maker.

Alabanza's Instagram feed is a steady stream of self-representations hyper-aware of their physical appearance while continuously creating an overall self-portrait that is uncontainable and always in flux (see Figures 6 and 7). What has yet to be discussed art historically and is particularly apparent when observing Alabanza's use of self-representation on social media, is that the aesthetics of Instagram not only presents a challenge to how we think of and define photography and photographic practice, but it also counteracts the way stereotypes of marginalized constituencies are established.

Making photographs and looking at photographs are both active processes deeply enmeshed with, and informed by, ideology (Marita and Cartwright 2001; Sontag 2001; Tagg 1993). During both of these acts, our naturalized—and thus often unknown to us—cultural ideologies are deployed in the process of making images and in making assumptions about who or what we are looking at (Marita and Cartwright 2001; West 2004). The construction of the stereotype in visual culture is contingent on flattening ideas about a person or an identity constituency to a fixed, essentialized icon of said group. Thus, when trans femmes of color are repeatedly imaged as tragic and comedic tropes, and Caucasian femmes are spectacularized, we are bearing witness to the continued suturing of specific ideas to particular constituencies via

the perpetuation of stereotypes (Bhabha 1994).<sup>22</sup> We should remain wary of the complicated relationship between the icon and what it represents; we should also view the lens-based image as always ideologically saturated. Moreover, one ought to always consider any portrait as fabrication with significant political motives, whether consciously intended by the image-maker or not. When photography is framed as indexical, "truthful," or "objective," it behooves us to understand that this is rooted in a colonial project, set up to make visual distinctions between oppressor and oppressed (Halberstam 2018; Weheliye 2014; Bhabha 1994). To make a critical intervention into problematic issues in representation, it is necessary to begin to challenge the very discursive framing of the ontology of lens-based images. of said group. Thus, when trans femmes of color are repeatedly imaged as tragic and comedic tropes, and Caucasian femmes are spectacularized, we are bearing witness to the continued suturing of specific ideas to particular constituencies via the perpetuation of stereotypes (Bhabha 1994). 22 We should remain wary of the complicated relationship between the icon and what it represents; we should also view the lens-based image as always ideologically saturated. Moreover, one ought to always consider any portrait as fabrication with significant political motives, whether consciously intended by the image-maker or not. When photography is framed as indexical, "truthful," or "objective," it behooves us to understand that this is rooted in a colonial project, set up to make visual distinctions between oppressor and oppressed (Halberstam 2018; Weheliye 2014; Bhabha 1994). To make a critical intervention into problematic issues in representation, it is necessary to begin to challenge the very discursive framing of the ontology of lens-based images.

**Figure 6.** Alabanza's selfies on Instagram. Demonstrating pattern jamming as well as showcasing their ever-shifting gender. Source: Screen grab Courtesy of Ace Lehner and approved by Travis Alabanza via Instagram messaging exchange 21 December 2020. Rather than creating static and reductive representations, an icon, or stereotype, Alabanza's **Figure 6.** Alabanza's selfies on Instagram. Demonstrating pattern jamming as well as showcasing their ever-shifting gender. Source: Screen grab Courtesy of Ace Lehner and approved by Travis Alabanza via Instagram messaging exchange 21 December 2020.

selfies present a diversity of potential ways of being a Black British gender-non-conforming trans femme (see Figure 6). They showcase Alabanza's gender and intersectional identity as continually

of the work, and the nuanced process of the negotiation of identity.23 Alabanza's images land as

22 Homi K. Bhabha argues that stereotypes operate by playing on the above outlined cultural assumptions and

on an anxious repetition of the fixed image.

14

23 Such practices are reminiscent of the work of Nikki S. Lee, a now canonical conceptual photographer who herself is imaged in her *Projects* series, but is not the person depressing the shutter. For many years in the late 1990s through the early 2000s, Lee, a Korean-born, NYC-based conceptual art photographer, embarked

shifting and ever augmenting. Their self-imaging on Instagram reflects no investment in the technologies of art world hierarchies. Instead, Alabanza deploy a vernacular aesthetic, while contemplating the space that photography occupies between index and performativity. The resulting images are highly complex and distinctly contemporary in the service of the conceptual underpinning <sup>22</sup> Homi K. Bhabha argues that stereotypes operate by playing on the above outlined cultural assumptions and mobilizing representations of marginalized identity categories as a "fixed reality" which is at once an "other" and produced as knowable by being visible. Bhabha also describes the operation of the stereotype as relying on an anxious repetition of the fixed image.

Rather than creating static and reductive representations, an icon, or stereotype, Alabanza's selfies present a diversity of potential ways of being a Black British gender-non-conforming trans femme (see Figure 6). They showcase Alabanza's gender and intersectional identity as continually shifting and ever augmenting. Their self-imaging on Instagram reflects no investment in the technologies of art world hierarchies. Instead, Alabanza deploy a vernacular aesthetic, while contemplating the space that photography occupies between index and performativity. The resulting images are highly complex and distinctly contemporary in the service of the conceptual underpinning of the work, and the nuanced process of the negotiation of identity.<sup>23</sup> Alabanza's images land as discourse within contemporary debates in photography. For, as Charlotte Cotton, the photography scholar, has observed:

Rather than offering an appreciation of virtuoso photographic practice or distinguishing key individuals as "masters" of photography, conceptual art played down the importance of craft and authorship. It made an asset of photography's unshakeable and everyday capacity to depict things: it took on a distinctly "non-art," "deskilled," and "unauthored" look and emphasized that it was the act depicted in the photograph that was of artistic importance (Cotton 2004, p. 21).

Alabanza's self-images challenge established modes of production (with no elaborate or expensive equipment expected in Artworld scenarios), they elide established art world forms of circulation by using social media networking; they also reach potentially massive audiences instantaneously and are readily and easily consumed. They are not beholden to the art world or mainstream media exclusionary practice governing the type of images that go public.<sup>24</sup> Because of its ability to circumnavigate regulatory apparatus, the content that appears on social media sites (such as Instagram) is often more radical, in terms of content, aesthetics, and significance, than that observable in the art world, or popular culture. As art historian and visual studies scholar, Jennifer A. González has observed, increasingly contemporary forms of activist art utilize the Internet and mass media while also interrogating "the politics of representation, the politics of corporeality, and the

<sup>23</sup> Such practices are reminiscent of the work of Nikki S. Lee, a now canonical conceptual photographer who herself is imaged in her *Projects* series, but is not the person depressing the shutter. For many years in the late 1990s through the early 2000s, Lee, a Korean-born, NYC-based conceptual art photographer, embarked on a series of projects where she embedded herself in various subcultures adopting their aesthetics and ways of life and had herself imaged with members of given constituencies via a point and shoot camera replete with the time stamp photographed by someone else (Murray 2004; Lyon 2002; Allison 2009).

<sup>24</sup> Circulation, production, consumption and regulation are the concerns of Cultural Studies, the underlining methodology that I employ for this project. For a fuller discussion on cultural studies, see (Turner 1990).

politics of the gaze" (Flanagan et al. 2007, p. 5). Enacting González's observation, trans self-images like those of Alabanza intervene in the politics of representation, corporeality, and the gaze. Visualizing new subjectivities outside of sanctioned parameters and critically reflecting upon a variety of power structures that have historically marginalized and dehumanized them, trans and non-binary self-images, especially those of Alabanza, utilize social media platforms like Instagram precisely for the reasons mentioned above.

#### **7. Between the Image and the Subject**

Trans, as a rejection of assigned gender, is a rejection of what was attached to us based on our physical attributes, or assumptions based on surface aesthetics. Trans subjects reject a gender that has been ascribed us based on interpretation of our physical surface, in favor of living our lives based on our internal feeling—something not visible, but rather often expressed visually. Gender is communicated in part via playing with the aesthetics and expectations of gendered performances and embodiments (Cárdenas 2017; Halberstam 2018). Trans, as an analytic, offers a method to view representations not only as distinct and distant from the subject rendered, but in tension with it. A trans self-imaging praxis like that of Alabanza provides a method that prompts a rethinking of surfaces necessarily relating to essence, identity, and authenticity, unfixing the surface from the subject.

Travis Alabanza's trans self-imaging practice intervenes in methods of photography and its complex relationship to seeing as equating to knowledge, and notions of lens-based imaging as related to unmediated "truth," revealing that the indexicality that we associate with photographs is similar to the essentialist ways we in the West are taught to assume the exteriority of a subject matches their self-identification. Current discourse around identity is shifting via trans cultural production and we are seeing a move away from the idea that one can categorize others based on interpretation of aesthetics. Thus, we are now witnessing a shift wherein we learn to respect people's self-identifications, regardless of what identities and values viewers may want to suture to them based on visual assessment (for example, identities such as class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and value such as worthiness of being treated as a person, or worthy of degradation and cruelty etc.). In their prolific self-imaging, using the aesthetics of a media platform that enables the construction of a continually evolving self, Alabanza's work visually problematizes our cultural belief in the photograph's correlation with authenticity and truth.

Beyond mobilizing Instagram as an intervention into discourses of representation, Alabanza's ever-shifting representation acts as radical maneuver in reworking the conceptual ontology of photography. Alabanza performs iterations of self that deploy various displays of their complex identity and expansive gender expression. Part of

the ontology of transness as an identity is well-suited to challenging the Western conception of photography. For, as trans identities often unmoor notions of surface aesthetics equating to some notion of authentic self, they undo the equation that visually interpreting a surface can lead to the procurement of knowledge, or precisely how photographs have been framed ideologically in the Western context. Thus, when Alabanza makes a self-image, they intentionally play with the idea that they are in control of how their gender appears; they are performing a picture while intimately aware that a surface is never necessarily correlative to any notion of interiority, authenticity or truth. This conceptually opens up and troubles the relationship between the image and the subject and intervenes in this space. There can be no flattening of one image and one version of Alabanza; one must continually consult Alabanza's feed to view the gender that they perform at any given point in time, in any given location.

Scrolling through Alabanza's feed, one views their gender shift from high femme donning full makeup and pursed lips to wearing short shorts, and no top with a hairy chest (see Figure 6 bottom left and one in from bottom left). Alabanza presents themselves as a hip fashion visionary, wearing edgy, retro fashions full of color and attitude (see bottom row right), not only countering stereotypic representations (as discussed with the example of the film *Tangerine*), but providing a plethora of non-binary and Black British corporealities that push open the trans visual field. That is to say, in forwarding countless images of themself as discrete iterations, Alabanza is mobilizing an infinite oeuvre of Black British trans femme ways of being.

Alabanza's Instagram feed consists almost entirely of self-images. From one image to the next, Alabanza always appears as a new example of gender non-conforming femininity (see Figures 1, 6 and 7). On the whole, their Instagram feed confounds an easy collapsing of image and subject by continually shifting their self-representation. In contradistinction to the functioning of the stereotype where one images is anxiously repeated and ideas about the subject ideologically, albeit problematically sutured to the token representations of a given constituency, which is bound up with the belief that a singular portrait image is demonstrative of the subject and the subsequent belief that we can assign value and categorization to portrait representations as well as people in daily life. Travis Alabanza mobilizes their Instagram feed in a way that suggests that even with a seemingly endless flow of self-representations, there will never be enough images to depict Alabanza in their entirety, and that identity and gender are continually morphable. Thus, with one image or a thousand images, one will never be adequality capable of articulating a singular visual "truth" about Travis Alabanza.

In contradistinction to the singular isolated iconic portrait photograph, Alabanza's Instagram feed is made up of countless images, always augmenting and showcasing the subject as nuanced, malleable, and continually reinventing

themself. Non-binary trans femme self-representations like theirs directly challenge how we have defined portraiture in Europe and North America since the Renaissance. Amelia Jones has observed that in the West, we have a cultural tendency—especially in portraiture—to collapse the representation for the thing itself (Jones 2006, pp. 2–5, 13–14; Jones 2012, pp. 23–24). For the purpose of understanding how Alabanza's work is an intervention in Western photography discourse, it is useful to think through Jones's articulation of the complex space between the surface of the image and the subject imaged. Jones's "gap" is temporal, spatial and conceptual. The flattening of time, physicality and ideas is precisely how images have been confused with evidence, truth and fact, and when we bear in mind that the image is always removed via this multidimensional gap from the subject, then we are infinitely more capable of viewing the image just as a surface rendering and not confuse it for the subject in the photograph.

#### **8. Deploying the Strategy of Pattern Jamming**

Alabanza's mobilization of loud, intricate, nuanced, visual aesthetics continually focuses viewers' attention to the surface of the image, making it difficult to see the photograph as a "window into a world." In using visual strategies that keep attention on the surface of the image through the deployment of a bold juxtaposition of pattern, texture and color, Alabanza reminds viewers that photographs are flat surfaces, Alabanza implements aesthetic resistance to the inclination toward believing the image *is* the subject and that simply by looking at pictures, one gains information about the person imaged.

Within the frame of each square image, Alabanza deploys fashions and compositional aesthetics that call attention to the surface of the picture plane, visually reminding us that the photograph does not and cannot contain depth, that it is two-dimensional both physically and conceptually. For example, in the top center image of Figure 6, Alabanza stands in a color blocked outfit that mimics the colors and shapes of the wall behind them. The wall itself runs parallel to the picture plane and appears close behind Alabanza in the image, thus flattening the pictorial space stopping the illusion of depth. The visual similarities between the shapes and colors of the wall are mimicked by the outfit conflating surface of the figure and the surface of the background, further calling attention to the flatness of the photograph. Alabanza's imaging praxis in this way reflects tactics deployed in post-colonial contexts. Such images challenge the ideologically constructed "indexical" relationship between the surface of the picture and what is imaged (Pinney and Peterson 2003). Nicole Archer has noted that contemporary trans artists often use a technique she describes as "pattern jamming." Archer notes that several contemporary trans visual artists, deploy this successful tactic to defray reading through the image, keeping viewers' attention on the surface of the work (Archer 2017, pp. 293–319).

In a small, gridded section of Alabanza's Instagram feed (see Figure 7), the visual rhythm of the work becomes akin to that of an abstract painting. That is to say, the eye is continually moving around the surface, jumping from color to similar color and shape to similar shape, tracing the outline of the figure from one frame to another. In the top left image, the bent knee first appears and is echoed in the second image to the right; in the image below, the bent knee appears again in the opposite direction. A pop of red appears in the top right corner and then again in the image to the left, again still in a small square in the central image, and the eye moves on to note the orange in the bottom row. Then, the blue of that backdrop carries the eye to the bottom left to notice the blue of Alabanza's dress as they sit on a bench, and so on, in keeping the eye moving around the picture plane and on the surface of the image. The ways in which Alabanza mobilizes their likeness in conjunction with fashion, colors, and composition enable a continually augmenting self-articulation that keeps our attention on the surface of the image.

**Figure 7.** Alabanza's selfies on Instagram. Demonstrating pattern jamming as well as showcasing their ever-shifting gender. Source: Image courtesy of Ace Lehner and approved by Travis Alabanza via Instagram messaging exchange 21 December 2020. **Figure 7.** Alabanza's selfies on Instagram. Demonstrating pattern jamming as well as showcasing their ever-shifting gender. Source: Image courtesy of Ace Lehner and approved by Travis Alabanza via Instagram messaging exchange 21 December 2020.

**9. Decolonizing Beauty** 

2019).

supremacist, cis, heteropatriarchal notions of beauty.26

token trans femme of color who fits withing established frameworks of expectations about gender and race i.e., Laverne Cox). Alabanza's continuous image feed demonstrates a radical intervention exploding gender expectations, unfixing them, de-binarizing them and proposing new ways of being Black British and gender non-conforming. Forwarding themself as hip, self-assured, fashionable and sexy, Alabanza unapologetically disidentifies with femininity, juxtaposing fashion choices associated with masculinity and femininity, visually decolonizing current regimes of gender and Caucasian

In Figure 6, the top left image, we see Alabanza in a black-studded leather choker, tight fishnet shirt over a black tank or bra; they parse their painted lips, beneath sultry eyes, and a hoop earring dangles from their left ear while their hair erupts off the top of their head, in a small dark poof just

The matrix of gender and the regime of racialization become more noticeable as their edges

18

26 In his book *Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics*, José Esteban Muñoz developed the indispensable concept of disidentification. The term describes acts wherein queer performers adopt parts of dominant identificatory categories, while perverting and jettisoning other parts of those identities with which they do not identify. See: (Muñoz 1999). For more on regimes of gender and Caucasian supremacist, cis, heteropatriarchal notions of beauty, see (Bederman 2000; Benjamin 2019; Carter 2007; Herzig 2016, Lehner

It should not be surprising that artists working in postcolonial geographic locations, and trans artists working in post-colonial locations (ideologically speaking), share a commitment to undoing the conception of photography as necessarily able to transmit information via a surface rendering; it is the discursive framing of photography as a medium of "truth," indexicality, and facticity that has bound it so tightly to the construction of stereotypes and has enabled its being used in the service of the oppression of colonized subjects and trans folks, especially trans femmes of color.<sup>25</sup>

#### **9. Decolonizing Beauty**

The matrix of gender and the regime of racialization become more noticeable as their edges become visible, which often occurs when non-binary folks of color come into view. Their very existence disrupts visually regulating matrixes of gender and racialization (Butler 1993, 2004, 2006; Weheliye 2014; Lehner 2019). Alabanza does not replicate established tropes of trans femininity (the neoliberal incorporate-able: Jenner, the tragic trans figure worthy of mistreatment: *Tangerine*, or the token trans femme of color who fits within established frameworks of expectations about gender and race i.e., Laverne Cox). Alabanza's continuous image feed demonstrates a radical intervention exploding gender expectations, unfixing them, de-binarizing them and proposing new ways of being Black British and gender non-conforming. Forwarding themself as hip, self-assured, fashionable and sexy, Alabanza unapologetically disidentifies with femininity, juxtaposing fashion choices associated with masculinity and femininity, visually decolonizing current regimes of gender and Caucasian supremacist, cis, heteropatriarchal notions of beauty.<sup>26</sup>

In Figure 6, the top left image, we see Alabanza in a black-studded leather choker, tight fishnet shirt over a black tank or bra; they parse their painted lips, beneath sultry eyes, and a hoop earring dangles from their left ear while their hair erupts off the top of their head, in a small dark poof just above their hands. The image is tightly cropped, and Alabanza is cut off at the elbows and chest. They stand in front of a whitish wall in shallow pictorial space. Alabanza looks at us through the picture plane embodying femme goth sultry sexiness through their clothing and

<sup>25</sup> For more on writing about the "truth" and indexicality of photography and its links to oppression see (Tagg 1993; Solomon-Godeau 1991; Berger and Dyer 2013; Berger 1990; Sekula 1986; Sontag 2001; Halberstam 2018).

<sup>26</sup> In his book *Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics*, José Esteban Muñoz developed the indispensable concept of disidentification. The term describes acts wherein queer performers adopt parts of dominant identificatory categories, while perverting and jettisoning other parts of those identities with which they do not identify. See: (Muñoz 1999). For more on regimes of gender and Caucasian supremacist, cis, heteropatriarchal notions of beauty, see (Bederman 2000; Benjamin 2019; Carter 2007; Herzig 2016; Lehner 2019).

expression. In the central image in the top row, Alabanza expresses a perky bright persona via their attire, and poses in front of a bright patterned, muralled wall. In this full-body picture, Alabanza is only cropped at the glittery platformed toe and the top of the flamboyant hairdo. Their outfit consists of bold color-blocked, large check top and short butter-yellow skirt. Alabanza's right hand is on their hip and their knees point slightly toward one another, while their left hand juts out from the elbow in a performative gesture (as if they are about to snap), one that references film-noir cinema and a femme hand holding a long cigarette. In this pose, Alabanza references tropes of feminine glamour in visual culture history.<sup>27</sup> While their outfit is a nod to playful femme fashions of the 1980s and 1990s.

In an image in the bottom row, Alabanza stands topless, wearing only yellow swim trunks and big white sunglasses with black lenses. Alabanza looks to be on a rooftop, their left arm extending outward along the top of a glass wall with a cityscape in the distance, while their right arm hangs down at their side. Alabanza's chest is flat above their shorts, which are worn high-waisted. While there are many other photographs in the screen grab of Alabanza's Instagram feed (Figures 6 and 7), considering just these three, a viewer will be hard pressed to delineate Alabanza's gender identity clearly as fitting neatly into any particular category based on binary cis-gendered stereotypes. In fact, no one image reflects a normative and reductive version of binary gender, and neither do all three of these showcase consistencies with any one type of binary gender or racialized expectation. From each image to the next, Alabanza's gender shifts along with the frame, location, and attitude. One might surmise that the image in the top left is a queer cis woman, the image in the middle-upper row a femme-identified retro fashion queen, and the figure in the swim trunks identifying with masculinity in some way. However, these assumptions are all about the same person and are all based on interpretation of aesthetics (clothing, pose, performance), underscoring that gender is not fixed but rather is malleable and contingent, often changing in relation to setting, mood, and companions.

Visually decolonizing current regimes of gender and Caucasian supremacist transphobic notions of beauty, Travis Alabanza demonstrates gender as performative, but also as a malleable and mobile set of endlessly mutable and ever-deployable signifiers, based in large part on visual communication. Alabanza visually asserts femme-ness as a free signifier, not necessarily in the domain of any particular biological characteristics. Underscoring that biological sex has nothing to do with gender, nor is Alabanza's deployment of masculine or feminine otherwise tied to biology. By creating a multiplicity of non-binary, Black, trans corporealities,

<sup>27</sup> Marcia Ochoa observes that glamour is often invoked as a "form of power" that enables "legibility," "affirmation" and "survival." (Ochoa 2014, pp. 89–90).

the field of representations mobilized by Alabanza expands visual examples of gender presentations for subjects to emulate and brings new modes of intersectional identities into being. This work begins to create space for new aesthetics of beauty, not measured against dominant systems, but celebrated for their multiplicity and transgressiveness.<sup>28</sup>

#### **10. Parting Thoughts**

The long-established art historical hierarchy around portraiture based on the method of creation, venue of the exhibition of the work, and the artist's relative situatedness in the art world is not only outmoded, but such thinking leads to critical blind spots, in need of reassessment in order to keep art discourse relevant. Measuring the success of a portrait or self-portrait is more productive when based on its conceptual underpinnings, intellectual rigor, and intervention into various visual matrixes. So, when we assess photographic representations, I propose we ask such questions as: How does the image challenge various ideological structures? How does it intervene in visual culture? How does it disrupt previous established aesthetics, methods and hierarchies? It behooves us to change our assessment of contemporary portraiture and self-portraiture and move beyond archaic and insufficient methods of analysis. In writing off contemporary works made using social media because they are made in a relatively new and widely accessible means is akin to writing off earlier forms of photography, like vernacular photography, color photography, Polaroids, and slideshows—-all of which have been inducted into the canons of art history and photographic practice.<sup>29</sup> The category of photographic portraiture and self-portraiture needs to include works in the emergent form of social media, regardless of previous exclusion based on material hierarchies.

Alabanza's self-images are the very definition of a self-portrait: "portraits of oneself done by oneself," but they facilitate a more nuanced understanding of self-portraiture. Alabanza's Instagram feed creates new representations that radically challenge the creation of stereotypes, and, again, they represent a multi-faceted self-portrait of a subject continually evolving—a self-portrait in a state of perpetual production, or what one may call tranifesting (Green and Ellison 2017). Alabanza's self-images produced in the context of their world, their community, and their perspective insert trans non-binary Black British subjectivity in context into broader

<sup>28</sup> For more on creating new aesthetics of trans beauty that are not measured against dominant systems, but celebrated as beautiful and worthy of life in their very transgressiveness, see (Lehner 2020; Wilchins 2017).

<sup>29</sup> Consider, for example, the success and canonization of William Eggleston's vernacular style color photos, Warhol's prolific use of Polaroids, and Nan Goldin's now legendary vernacular style slide shows.

culture in a way that is not a stereotype and models otherwise unseen ways of being. Thus, effectively, their Instagram feed constitutes a praxis of worlding, of bringing oneself into existence via permitting oneself to appear in visual culture; a radical intervention from someone who represents a constituency actively erased from visual culture and daily life.

Modelling an interdisciplinary trans visual studies method of analyzing Alabanza's work reveals that there are many hierarchies that could factor into the lack of attention garnered by these important cultural interventions. The scholarly neglect of trans femmes prolifically self-imaging on social media may lie in their being femme, or trans, or not Caucasian, or that the majority of these representations appear as selfies. All of these intersecting factors position these self-image makers and their images as antithetical to what have historically been valued forms of self-representation in the West. Yet, studying these images is integral to understanding visual culture and art today, and many of the self-imaging praxis of trans femmes of color like those of Alabanza radically rework Western discursive framing of the ontology of photography, unseating investment in notions of truth and indexicality, challenging how we understand gender, exploring the intersection of gender and racialization, and creating new forms of self-representation. Thus, I suggest that we view self-images like those of Travis Alabanza as critical and necessary praxis in and of themselves, within the discourse of issues in representation, art history, gender, intersectionality, racialization, contemporary art and self-portraiture.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank Travis Alabanza for being generous in the work that they make and in allowing me to use their images herein. Furthermore, it has been a pleasure to meet them and to write about their work. Their contributions to culture, art, and humanity are invaluable, their spirit indomitable, and their passion for their work inspiring. I would like to acknowledge Derek Conrad Murray, Jennifer A. González, Amelia Jones, and Marcia Ochoa for their ongoing mentorship and encouragement around my work. I would also like to thank the peer reviewers of this work, the publishers at MDPI and the contributors to this volume, all of whom have been invaluable interlocutors to this research.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. *Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code*. Medford: Polity.


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