Antidote
Curates, with the support of Gucci, is holding the first solo exhibition in
Paris of trailblazing American photographer Mariette Pathy Allen.
Pathy
Allen has for more than four decades been photographing nonbinary and
transgender people.
“Through
her artistic practice, the photographer — a pioneer in spotlighting these
people — has helped raise the awareness among the general public and change the
perception of gender diversity,” Antidote Curates said in a statement.
Antidote
Curates is the new publication accompanying biannual fashion magazine Antidote,
founded and directed by Yann Weber. Out starting in September, each issue of
Antidote Curates highlights the work of an artist.
Running
through Feb. 10 at 20 Rue des Gravilliers in Paris, the “Mariette Pathy Allen”
show includes 36 prints, taken between the end of the ’70s until 2010.
Each of
the prints is for sale, in numbered and signed editions, as are various
posters. Forty percent of their proceeds will be donated to the Acceptess-T
association, which defends the rights of the most vulnerable transgender people
in France. It fights transphobia, serophobia and discrimination against sex
workers by facilitating access to health services and decent living conditions.
Antidote’s
roots in fashion include a unisex vegan clothing line, launched in 2018. Called
Antidote Care, it is based on upcycled deadstock and vintage items featuring
zero animal materials.
Antidote
Curates Stages Mariette Pathy Allen Photo Exhibit. By Jennifer Weil. WWD,
January 31, 2022.
"Andy
Becoming Andi, Near San Francisco," 1978-1989
©
Mariette Pathy Allen, Vintage dye transfer print from the portfolio
“Transformations” (Edition of 50), 22 x 15 inches, Courtesy of ClampArt, New
York City.
“Transformations,”
Mariette Pathy Allen’s 1980s color portraits of cross-dressers, is on view at
ClampArt through April 10. It is her first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Mariette
Pathy Allen has been photographing the transgender community for over 40 years.
Through her artistic practice, she has been a pioneering force in gender
consciousness, contributing to numerous cultural and academic publications
about gender variance and lecturing across the globe. Her first book, published
in 1989, was titled Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them
(E.P. Dutton). The publication was groundbreaking in its investigation of a
misunderstood community.
"Kay
(Ex-Green Beret)," 1978-1989
©
Mariette Pathy Allen, Vintage dye transfer print from the portfolio
“Transformations” (Edition of 50), 15 x 22 inches, Courtesy of ClampArt, New
York City.
The
series “Transformations” started with black-and-white images in New Orleans on
the last day of Mardi Gras in 1978 when “by fluke, I stayed at the same hotel
as a group of crossdressers, one of whom became a friend,” Allen writes. “This
chance meeting took me into a mostly closeted world of men who need to express
their ‘feminine sides.’ Realizing early on that I had stumbled upon something
potentially liberating and almost completely misunderstood, I set out to
‘de-freakify,’ and to offer a different view.”
Allen
produced a portfolio of 11 dye transfer prints to coincide with the release of
the book Transformations. The exhibition at ClampArt includes the complete
portfolio of color vintage prints, which consists of portraits of
cross-dressers shot in the 1980s. The same series was exhibited in January 1990
at the Simon Lowinsky Gallery in New York City. ClampArt’s show also includes a
selection of black-and-white prints by Allen shot in the same era.
"Terisa
[Tom as Carol]," 1978-1989
©
Mariette Pathy Allen, Vintage dye transfer print from the portfolio
“Transformations” (Edition of 50), 22 x 15 inches, Courtesy of ClampArt, New
York City.
"Madeline
Victoria," 1978-1989
©
Mariette Pathy Allen, Vintage dye transfer print from the portfolio
“Transformations” (Edition of 50), 22 x 15 inches, Courtesy of ClampArt, New
York City.
Mariette
Pathy Allen’s second book, The Gender Frontier (Kehrer Verlag, 2003) is a
collection of photographs, interviews, and essays covering political activism,
youth, and the range of people that identify as transgender in the United
States. It won the 2004 Lambda Literary Award in the Transgender/Genderqueer
category. Other books by the artist include TransCuba (Daylight Books, 2014)
and Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand (Daylight Books, 2017).
In 2020,
Queer|Art, a New York nonprofit dedicated to promoting the work of LGBTQ+
artists, launched a new $10,000 grant for Black trans women artists. The award,
called the Illuminations Grant, was developed in collaboration with
photographer Mariette Pathy Allen, writer and consultant Aaryn Lang, and
multidisciplinary artist Serena Jara. Allen single-handedly endowed the award.
"Vanessa
[in a Fur Jacket]," 1978-1989
©
Mariette Pathy Allen, Vintage dye transfer print from the portfolio
“Transformations” (Edition of 50), 22 x 15 inches, Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City.
Mariette
Pathy Allen’s photographs have been widely exhibited in the United States and
abroad. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn
Museum of Art, New York City; New York Public Library, New York City; National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Frankfurt, Germany;
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York; Musée de la Photographie,
Charleroi, Belgium; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Bibliothèque Nationale,
Paris, France; Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Duke
University, Durham, North Carolina; Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, Indiana;
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; McEvoy Family Collection, San
Francisco, California; Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania; and Museum
of Photography, Lishui, China.
"Vicky
West Dancing the Cancan With My Daughters, Cori and Julia, Bridgehampton,
NY," 1982
©
Mariette Pathy Allen, Gelatin silver print (Edition of 15), 12 x 18 inches,
Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City.
Her work
will be archived at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Sallie Bingham
Center for Women’s Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. For
more, please visit www.mariettepathyallen.com, ClampArt is located at 247 W.
29th St., Ground Floor, New York, NY 10001. For more information: (646)
230-0020 or info@clampart.com, www.clampart.com. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday,
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Mariette
Pathy Allen's Historic "Transformations" Now on View. By Christopher Harrity. Advocate, March 31,
2021.
New York
photographer Mariette Pathy Allen has been photographing the trans community
for over 40 years. From New Orleans to Miami and beyond, over 100 of her photos
are on view at the Museum of Sex in New York for her exhibition Rites of
Passage, 1978 - 2006, which the museum describes as “documenting the spectrum
of gender expression.” Selected from thousands of analogue photographs, Allen’s
photos detail a time when DIY events and conferences were safe spaces for the
queer and trans community to come together and fight, as well as hope, for a
more equal future.
It all
started when Allen took a trip to New Orleans in 1978 to attend Mardi Gras, and
met a group of women who invited her for brunch. When she took a group photo of
them, it was the start of a lifelong series. Over the following decades, she
not only captured candid photos of gorgeous women and men dressed to the nines,
at home, but also their grassroots activism and protests.
Allen
has been embedded with the community for a long time, and has had incredible
access; whether photographing drag queens putting on makeup at drag balls in
Harlem in the 80s, lesbian couples in the 90s, or her best friend Toby,
starting in 1978. They all capture the closeness she felt to her subjects; and
some have been compiled into her 1989 photo book, Transformations:
Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them, which was a groundbreaking book at a
time when the trans community was largely misunderstood. Allen, now 79, spoke
to i-D about her friend Toby, protests in the 1990s and backlash in the Trump
era.
How did
you get into photographing the trans community?
Mariette
Pathy Allen: I was lucky, I was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 1978 and
stayed in the same hotel as a group of crossdressers. The last day for
breakfast, I came down with my camera equipment and I saw this group of ten
people and one asked if I wanted to ask them for brunch. I did. After
breakfast, they all walked out of the door into the garden, where there was a swimming
pool, then stood in a line, one was taking photos, so I thought ‘maybe its okay
for me to take a picture, too.’ I raised my camera; everyone was looking in
different directions. One was looking straight back at me, I had an amazing
feeling, like I’m looking not at a man or a woman, but the essence of a human
being. I was seeing a soul, rather than a gendered person.
Then
what happened?
I
thought to myself: ‘I have to have this person in my life.’ It turned out that
they lived 20 blocks away from me in New York City. I made friends with her and
she took me everywhere, mostly in the trans community, and brought me to a
conference, where I started to really get to know more of the community. I
traveled all over the country to conferences, staying with them, which is how I
got photos of people in their homes.
When you
first started in the 1970s shooting the trans community, how difficult was life
for them?
Life was
difficult for them because people were in hiding. They were full of guilt and
anxiety. Many of them felt they were the only one in the world who had those
needs. They were suffering because they had to hide who they were.
Crossdressers had it the hardest. If you say transgender, it was a person born
in the wrong body. If it was crossdresser, it made no sense to people. They had
the hardest time to justify themselves. They were treated as freaks and
perverts. I felt it was my job to show them as lovable people, rather than
freaks. That’s what compelled me to do my first book.
Are
there any important friends you photographed?
Toby was
a beautiful woman; I’m showing of her here is her lying on the floor after a
long day of shooting. There’s also one of her looking in the mirror. She was a
remarkable person. Toby was a performer who would go onstage before Ethyl
Eichelberger, the famed drag queen. I got to know Toby really well, as well as
the comic ballet company, Les Ballets Trockadero De Monte Carlo. Toby was an
artist, she used to design the covers of drag magazines and support the
community, she worked at Lee Brewster’s Mardi Gras Boutique in Greenwich
Village, too.
You’ve
included photos of trans couples with their children, why is that important?
I did
that as soon as I could because I felt it was important to normalize. Trans
people have real lives and they have kids and I wanted to show them in their
everyday lives. I wanted to de-freakify people were decent people and had a
terrible reputation.
Besides
the portraits, there’s photos of protests on view, too?
I
photographed any protest I could get to. There young black and Hispanic women
who were often prostitutes and they would get murdered and nobody cared except
the community. One protest was for Brandon Teena, the trans man who was killed
in 1993 (his life was made into the film Boys Don’t Cry in 1999). Transgender
was deemed a mental illness, so there was a lot of work to change the medical
profession, as well. This started in the 1990s, now it’s more all over the
place. We’re in a more violent time and trans people are fighting all over
again.
How far
do we still need to go supporting the trans community?
Under
Obama, things were going well. Now, we’re having a backlash. If we can get rid
of these political terrors and get back to a normal government, it still will
take awhile to heal a lot of the damage that has been done. This will take
quite a while. I assume and hope we will continue along the same course we were
in, the whole world, the direction the trans community was going in under
Obama. On one hand, it has improved a lot. My fantasy is that things will be
better after 2020 and pick up where we left off, as a society.
Mariette
Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage, 1978-2006 runs until January 20, 2020 at the
Museum of Sex in New York City.
See 40
years of photographs documenting the beauty of gender expression. By Nadja
Sayej. i-D, October 21, 2019.
Mariette
Pathy Allen’s 40-year oeuvre is a deeply emotional record that humanises the
fight for transgender equality
For
transgender communities in America, the 1970s-80s was a key time for
establishing grassroots activism. Many support organisations began to emerge,
as well as protest marches across the country like the first National March in
Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. But even though gender-non
conforming identities were putting their lives on the line to fight for
equality, among wider patriarchal society their plea for life went unheard. In
1980, for example, trans people were officially classed by the American
Psychiatric Association as having ‘gender identity disorder.’
It was
during this exact tumultuous era that American photographer Mariette Pathy
Allen identified her camera as a powerful weapon for change. In 1978, she
attended the New Orleans Mardi Gras where she met a group of male to female
crossdressers and photographed them – an experience that would set the tone for
her 40-year career creating deeply emotional and personal portraits of gender
non conforming communities globally.
There
are many markers that make Pathy Allen’s pre-internet era ephemera a powerful
historical source for the progression of gender equality. Her close ties to her
subjects affirms their authentic representation, while her pledge to
photographing them in mundane settings (simply living life) illuminates the
humanism at the heart of the battle at a time when these communities were
largely stripped of their humanity. Each Pathy Allen photo is a plea for
society to remember the lives at stake in the battle for gender-freedom. Her
key works include her 1989 photobook, Transformations: Cross Dressers and Those
Who Love Them, which is considered a landmark reference for gender-variant
awareness, as well as her 1990s Gender Frontier.
Perfectly
describing her craft, Pathy Allen stated in the introduction to Transformations
and that: “To depict them (my subjects) where they belong, in the daylight of
daily life, rich in relationships with spouses, children, parents, and friends
is my tribute to their courage.” She added that “Anatomy, sexual preference,
and gender identity and expression are not bound together like some immutable
pretzel but are separate issues. Most of us are born male or female, but
masculinity and femininity are personal expressions. With the breaking apart of
this pretzel, an exhilarating expansion of freedom impossible... a rite of
passage out of the tyranny of sexual stereotypes altogether.”
Celebrating
the persistent relevance of Pathy Allen’s work is New York’s Museum of Sex
whose current show, Mariette Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage, 1978-2006, unites
Allen ephemera that shape the history of their time, including photographs,
hand-written notes, darkroom prints, and DIY programmes for
gender-nonconforming events.
In
celebration of the show, below we speak to Rites of Passage curator Lissa
Rivera about the eternal importance of Allen’s work.
Why did
you decide to run this show now in 2019?
Lissa
Rivera: In every show I organise, I make a point to explore gender variance and
the variety of gender expression, as I feel that this will help create a
greater understanding and acceptance among all of our visitors. Although
Mariette Pathy Allen has continued to explore trans issues as the main focus of
her practice, this exhibition explores her work before the major shift to
digital photography in the early 2000s. Between 2005-2007 YouTube went live,
Facebook announced public access, and the first generation iPhone was released.
More than ever, a wider range of individuals gained access to creating their
own media and images on a global scale. But as these social and technological
changes have accelerated, I think it’s more important than ever to look back at
how trans and queer individuals created community and carved out space to
express themselves in the past, because in many ways they laid the groundwork
for the present moment of increasing freedom and acceptance.
How do
you think trans rights have changed since Mariette started photographing, and
how are these changes reflected in her work?
Lissa
Rivera: Trans rights are still being challenged, and there is still a lot to
fight for. Many of the individuals Pathy Allen photographed were of a
generation that had extremely limited access to literature regarding gender
variance. Information about cross-dressing and transsexuality (now more
commonly referred to under the umbrella term transgender) was largely limited
to medical journals and fetish magazines. Mariette documented pioneers such as
Virginia Prince, Leslie Feinberg, Sylvia Rivera, and Vicky West who were at the
forefront of the trans rights movement. The section of the exhibition that most
reflects a shift in understanding is the ephemera case, which displays
typewritten transcripts, DIY event programs and handwritten correspondence.
Pathy Allen documented her subjects’ voices and words as carefully and
thoughtfully as in her photography.
Mariette
was in close ties with many of her subjects, considering them family. How do
you think this translates in the images and what does this closeness bring to
the authentic representation of her subjects?
Lissa
Rivera: Mariette Pathy Allen’s closest friends are members of the trans
community, and these friendships have lasted decades. The most intimate moments
are shared in her work – the mundane as well as the milestones. In 1989, Pathy
Allen wrote in her introduction to Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who
Love Them that her goal in photographing trans and gender variant people was
‘To depict them where they belong, in the daylight of daily life, rich in
relationships with spouses, children, parents and friends.’ This was, she said,
‘my tribute to their courage.’
How does
the show reflect that these images were taken at a time before the internet
where face to face outlets were the only safe spaces to be out?
Lissa
Rivera: Certainly face to face conferences and communities were vital in the
years before the internet, but newsletters, informational pamphlets, and letter
writing were all important modes of communication, which provided essential
lifelines to individuals around the country. Examples of these kinds of documents
are on view in the exhibition. Ink and paper facilitated the creation of a
larger community and helped people make vital connections, and were essential
to organising meetups, conferences and protests. The majority of the
photographs were taken before the wider use of cell phones, when long distance
calls were quite costly. Pathy Allen has been participating in conferences for
the past 40 years, offering her skills as a photographer, and her support as an
ally.
Nearly
20 years on from the end of this show’s selection, why are Mariette’s images
still relevant today?
Lissa
Rivera: These images and documents are part of history, and it is important for
younger generations to see the progression of language, representation and
understanding in relationship to our current time. It is important for any
generation to consider the people who came before them, their struggles and
their accomplishments. Pathy Allen’s photographs are also incredibly beautiful
and often quite moving; they are a tribute to the vibrancy, resilience, and
courage of trans individuals and communities in the 20th century.
How is
Mariette’s work a part of progressing trans rights and why is photography as a
medium important to the progression of trans rights and minority groups more
generally?
Lissa
Rivera: Visibility is crucial. Pathy Allen’s archive is staggering in terms of
depth, quality and the sheer number of voices recorded. For centuries, the
media has been dominated by a white male perspective – controlled by
corporations run by the privileged few. Now, many more people have access to
quality image-making tools, such as iPhones, to create their own media.
Consumers can choose who to ‘follow’ and what articles to read from an endless
media landscape. This has created a landslide in greater representation for
minorities. Old Guard institutions who are not on board with this change are
becoming increasingly irrelevant. But Pathy Allen’s photographs also remind us
that alongside these political and technological transformations, an equally
important force for change has been the insistence of thousands of queer and
trans individuals that they deserve to be happy and fulfilled, to be able to
live freely no matter their gender identity, and no matter what obstacles the
broader culture put in their way.
Mariette
Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage runs at New York’s Museum of Sex until 8
September 2019.
Four
decades of photos show American trans communities living and loving. By Lexi
Manatakis.
Dazed,
April 5, 2019.
Mariette
Pathy Allen’s 35-year journey documenting the transgender community had a
serendipitous beginning.
In 1978,
Allen and her husband went on a trip to New Orleans and happened to stay in the
same inn as a group of cross-dressers. One morning after breakfast, the group
began taking pictures by the swimming pool, and Allen, already with her camera
equipment, gently asked if she could take a few shots as well.
“I
lifted the camera to my eye looking at these people and one person standing
opposite me looked back at me and I felt I was looking into a soul, not a man,
not a woman, but the essence of a human being, and I thought, I have to have
this person in my life,” Allen recalled.
That
person, Vicki West, ended up living about 20 blocks from Allen in Manhattan and
started introducing Allen to parties, friends, and conferences of people
involved in the cross-dressing community.
“I found
it beyond fascinating,” Allen said. “I discovered I had something I could
contribute. When I started doing portraits of transgender people, no one was
doing it and I had to figure out what would be the most helpful way of doing
it, what would be the meaning of it?”
That
meaning turned out to help “de-freakify” the community to outsiders and to help
the people she photographed feel less stigmatized. While Allen initially began
documenting people who considered themselves to be cross-dressers, her work, as
well as the evolution of the trans community has expanded to those who identify
as gender queer, gender fluid, intersex, and other terms under the umbrella of
“transgender”—“it’s a long alphabet,” Allen said with a laugh.
In 1990,
Allen published her first book, Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who
Love Them, a collection of images and interviews of what was then a taboo
topic. Allen didn’t necessarily see the book as one that belonged to her, but
she said she saw herself as a conduit for people who were aching to have their
stories told, many of whom passed around copies, signing them as if it were a
yearbook.
“It did
a huge amount of good for the people themselves, and I’m still getting thanked
years later,” Allen said. “It saved marriages; it was the book they showed
their children or parents; it was their way of accessing their coming out. It
may have helped people stay in this world. … It was very moving to me.”
When
Allen was taking pictures during that time, many of her subjects didn’t know
how to behave in front of the camera.
“I was
often the first person who was positive and gave them permission and encouraged
them [to be who they were],” Allen said.
Throughout
the 1980s, Allen heavily documented the transgender world. She began simply
taking images of people as both men and women, moved onto photographing them
with their partners and was eventually able to do portraits of people with
their children. “Getting them with their children was the hardest of all
because they were questioning if they should tell the children, since they had
mostly hidden [their cross-dressing],” Allen said.
Allen’s
early work was much more stylized, avoiding images of people looking unhappy.
“I was literally trying to show them in a better light.”
Eventually
her work evolved to show a range of emotion and over time, as trans people have
become much more visible, Allen has found the need for her work has decreased.
She explained:
“People
are more out in the world, less afraid, more politicized and what most people
are interested in is ‘Do I look good? How does this dress look? Is my makeup
right?’ It’s not the same thing, but I don’t resent it because times, they have
changed.”
Allen
published a second book in 2003, The Gender Frontier, which included not only
male-to-female but also female-to-male people as well as queer youth. She is
currently working on a third book about the transgender community in Cuba.
Throughout
her career, documenting the transgender community, Allen has worked not only as
a photographer but as a champion and supporter of the people she photographs.
She has spoken at many conferences around the country, won a Lambda Literary
Award for The Gender Frontier, and has documented vigils and protest movements
that have affected the trans community. For someone who fell into the community
by a chance encounter, it has turned into a lifelong endeavor.
“I feel
like I’m more than an ally. I’m a participant and a believer.”
35 Years
as the Unofficial Photographer of Transgender Life. By David Rosenberg. Slate,
May 3, 2013.
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