Digital Book
As a transgender man I created the project as a step in my own self-acceptance and to promote positive body image in the trans community. Transfigure Book is based on the concept of a old-time children’s flipbook, comprised of transgender bodies, with interchanging heads, torsos, and nether regions. The book was created to explore our bodies in a safe and playful way.
The imagery portrays the complexity of gender and bodies and the ways in which these combinations may be surprising. In representing gender variant people/bodies, my intent is to illustrate that gender, sex, sexuality, presentation, and attraction are separate and, though they may intermingle at times, society/people should not assume that we are constrained by predictable versions of these variables.
Intended to explore political, social and legal ramifications of transgender/transsexual people. Transfigure investigates our physical bodies, body image, and body politics, in a playful and unapologetic way. Comprised of all aspects of diversity; ethnic background, body size and shape, age range, pre-op (pre sex reassignment operation), post-op, decisively no-op, on hormones and not. The Transfigure Book is inclusive of all people who self identify as transgender.
Photographer
Leon Mostovoy is a transgender artist who has been creating on the front lines of the queer and political art movements for decades. Formerly Tracy, Mostovoy started his queer art career producing erotic images for On Our Backs magazine in the early 1980s. Mostovoy’s most recent projects explore transgender identity, transformation, sexuality, and gender roles in contemporary U.S. society. His earlier photographic series have explored the struggles and triumphs of women as they strive for strength and independence living outside the parameters of heteronormative expectations. His installation “Death Of My Daughter” was shown in Romania in 2011 to encourage awareness and acceptance in/of their transgender community. In 2011, Leon presented his first retrospective, “(My) Queer (R)evolution,” at Temple University in Philadelphia. He has had over 50 shows, including solo and group photography and multi-media exhibitions. His work from the 1980-90’s was inducted into the ONE Archives, the largest LGBT in the world in January 2015 accompanied by an opening exhibition of his 1987-88 “Market Street Cinema” photography series. For more information visit: leonmostovoy.com
Writers
Brook Shelley
Brook Shelley is a lesbian trans woman living in Portland who hangs out with her cat, and does all manner of technical magic for a software company. She travels as often as possible, and can often be found on her couch, reading and enjoying a cider.
Cooper Lee Bombardier
Cooper Lee Bombardier is a writer and visual artist who grew up on the South Shore of Boston. He has been a construction worker, a cook, a carpenter, a union stagehand, a welder, a shop steward, a dishwasher, a truckdriver, and a housepainter, among other things; now he is busy writing and teaching writing. His visual art has most recently appeared in group shows like Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, NM; the 2011 National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco, and Helltown Workshop in Provincetown, MA. Cooper’s writing has appeared in many periodicals, most recently The Rumpus, Cavalcade Literary Journal, Unshod Quills, Faggot Dinosaur, Pathos Literary Journal, and Original Plumbing; along with the anthologies Sister Spit: Writing, Rants and Reminiscence from the Road, The Lowdown Highway; From the Inside Out, and Trans/Love. He was a Lambda Literary Foundation Fiction Fellow in 2011, attended the RADAR Lab in 2012, and was awarded a Signal Fire Arts Residency for Summer 2013. A veteran of the original Sister Spit tours, he has performed his writing all over the country. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. For more information visit: www.cooperleebombardier.com
Morty Diamond
Morty Diamond is a transsexual writer/ artist/ filmmaker who has edited two anthologies showcasing the trans experience from the perspective of transgender, transsexual and gender variant writers: From the Inside Out (Manic D Press) and the forthcoming Trans/Love (Manic D Press) to be published in August 2011. Morty has directed two movies, Trans Entities and Trannyfags, both of which document the trans experience/trans bodies through moving images. Diamond also uses performance art to make gender and trans bodies visible in public spaces. Past pieces include “My Year In Pink,” in which he wore head to toe pink everyday for a full year and “Ask A Tranny,” where he allowed strangers to ask him questions about transsexuality while sitting at a booth set up in Time Square. Morty has lectured as a guest artist and speaker on transgender issues at universities such as NYU, Sarah Lawrence, and Vassar. Please visit him on the web at www.mortydiamond.com
Music
Statues of Cats is a modern-vintage rock explosion of fiery jams, funky-jazzy skank, and 8-bit, punk-rock and sandpaper grittiness! We were lucky enough to get their song “memorabilia” for our video, and are huge fans of this band.Check out their website at www.statuesofcats.com to hear more of their music!
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