My creative practice centers around an exploration of identity – particularly gender and sexuality – through photographic portraiture. Drawing from my experience as a queer, non-binary person, my work is motivated by an existential need to understand and express myself and to connect with others. My intention is to create work that facilitates intimacy and encourages empathy, understanding, and critical conversations about identity and contemporary social life. As I pursue these aims, I continually explore what it means to live authentically and how visual representation – particularly photographic portraiture – plays a powerful role in that process.
Formally, I use a medium-format camera, natural light, and a slow working method to combine a traditional style of photographing with contemporary subject matter. My work does not attempt to provide definitive answers; rather, it invites viewers to engage with others in an intimate, meaningful way, requiring them to reflect on their own identities in the process.
Every Breath We Drew explores the power of identity, desire, and connection through portraits of myself and others. Working within the framework of queer experience and from my actively constructed sense of masculinity, my portraits examine the intersection between private, individual identity and the search for intimate connection with others. Rather than attempting to describe a specific identity or group – the gender identity and sexual orientation of the individuals varies – Every Breath We Drew asks larger questions about how identity is formed, desire is expressed, and intimate connection is sought.
Jess T. Dugan (American, b. 1986 Biloxi, MS) is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photographic portraiture. They received their MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago (2014), their Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard University (2010), and their BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2007).
Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 35 museums, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Library of Congress.
Dugan’s monographs include To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). They are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and were selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change.
Dugan teaches workshops at venues including the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and Filter Photo in Chicago, IL. In 2015, they founded the Strange Fire Collective to highlight work made by women, people of color, and LGBTQ artists. Currently, Dugan is the 2020-2021 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. They are represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL.
All images are available as 20 x 24" and 32 x 40" pigment prints made in editions of 10 with 3 AP's and 5 with 2 AP's. Pieces range in price from $3200 to $8500, depending on size and availability.
Please call: (312) 266-2350 for prices of specific pieces.
Prices are print only unless otherwise indicated.
Jess T. Dugan Aidan, 52, Burien, WA, 2016
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At the time of contemplating my gender and the trans element of it, I had been solidly entrenched in the dyke community. And I loved that. I felt really looked after and mentored and cared for. What they had brought into my world was a celebration of masculinity rather than a dismissal. It was like, bring it. It looks beautiful. We love it. We celebrate it. And that felt really good to me.
But what does it mean to have a trans man in lesbian space? As I would have conversations with folks I would be a little confused because I’d think, “You led me to this door and now you don’t want me to open it? You don’t want me to step through it? You brought me right here and now I’m just supposed to stare at this shut door? That doesn’t make sense. Why don’t I crack it open a little bit?” So ultimately that’s what I did. It made complete sense to me that somebody might do a gender transition, and it moved forward in what would seem to me like a trajectory. What I didn’t quite realize is that it wasn’t that way for them. My sheer presence was disruptive, and I started to push back and challenge that. I’m so impressed with so many of them because we would duke it out. We would sit there for three hours and there would be anger and tears and confusion and laughter and love.
And here I am, you know, almost twenty years later still thinking and talking about gender. You know, what is my gender? I don’t have an answer to that and I don’t need an answer. I’ve never felt fully female and I’ll never feel fully male and that’s really just fine. I feel pretty good about how I move through the world. The challenges are trying to be fully seen and received because others, of course, decide who you are. I move through the world and I don’t get a second glance. I live in a house at the end of a cul-de-sac with people who have no idea about my history. My partner has primarily identified as a lesbian in her adult life and now she’s not visible to the segment of the population that we both considered community. Not just the lesbian community, but even the broader queer community, because my transition is now a couple of decades old. You know, I continue to look more and more male. I’m older. I’m not a young pup anymore, but I still am in my heart.
Jess T. Dugan Amy, 77, Seattle, WA, 2016
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I identify as a trans woman, or just plain woman. In everyday life, of course, it’s woman, but if people ask, I tell them I’m trans. I don’t hide it exactly, but I don’t wear it on my forehead either. The first time I realized there was something fishy going on was in second grade and we were having a school play and doing Heidi. I wanted the lead part and the teacher said, “No, that’s only for girls.” And of course I knew I was a boy, but I didn’t realize that boys couldn’t do things like that. At the age of fourteen, I was left alone in the house for a summer and went up in the attic and found some of my mother’s old clothes and discovered I enjoyed dressing in them. After college, I went abroad to Denmark and decided to try denial. You just get busy with other things and then you don’t have to worry about your identity.
I met a woman that summer, Edith, that I eventually married. After we were married for about a year and a half, I realized, “This is not working, I need to be who I am.” So I outed myself to her. In those days, of course, the only label we had for it was transvestism. By 1980, when I was forty years old, I knew I wanted to transition, but I didn’t tell Edith. Somehow I got wind, I think through a television show, that if you wanted to transition you are required to get a divorce first. They didn’t want to foster lesbian couples being married legally. So, I wasn’t going to do that. I was too much in love. The two of us were married altogether forty-six years. So I waited, and then in 1993, she found out she had cancer. Of course, then I knew that this was not a time to transition. She died in 2008. I came out publically as transgender in 2012.
After Edith died, I was alone here in the house. It just got empty, very empty, very fast. And so I knew I needed to do something. I met Stephanie, a transgender woman, at the Emerald City Social Club. She was homeless at the time, so I said, “Why don’t you move in?” And then we started taking in other girls, too. Since then, I’ve had over thirty girls go through the house at one time or another, some for shorter periods, others for longer periods. I think it’s a worthwhile effort. I’m trying to give people a little bit of safe space and respite from the anxieties of homelessness.
As you grow old, you fear the unknown. You can end up needing care. By inviting people to come stay with me, I have someone to at least look after me on a daily basis and make sure that I’m not falling through the cracks. This whole house has served in some ways as a model because, as far as I know, it’s the first trans house. The model is simple: if you can, open your house to others. As I say, we don’t have a homeless problem, we have a hospitality problem. We can still be effective doing what we can even if we regret it’s not enough.
Jess T. Dugan Barbara, 70, Long Island, NY, 2016
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I always knew I was different, but how different, I didn’t know. I’m of Italian descent. I had to teach myself how to be a young boy, a young man. It wasn’t natural. I started dressing by the age of five. Dressing gave me a thrill, and that continued all through high school. After high school, in 1963, I joined the Air Force and went into aircraft maintenance. I spent a year in Vietnam. When I got out, I went to college, got my degree in aircraft technology, and went to work with United Airlines. During that time, I met my fiancé and we got married. And so I had a wife, a new career, and mind you, all this time I'm still dressing secretly. She worked the day shift and I worked midnights at United, so she would walk out, and into her closet I would go. We had three kids. About ten years into the marriage, Barbara – although Barbara wasn't Barbara at the time –
was yelling and screaming to come out. I still didn't know what this was all about. And I told my wife one day, I remember like it was yesterday. I was in the shower and this feeling came over me. I was sobbing, struggling. “Who am I? What am I?” When I got out of the shower, she said, “What's the matter?” I guess my eyes were bloodshot. So I explained to her what had happened and it just blew her mind altogether. That was the beginning of the downfall of my marriage. Things had changed. I still loved her, but it was tumultuous. It took thirty years for us to finally split.
My three kids were all adults by then. I wrote them an email and told them about me and what I had gone through. Nobody, and I mean nobody, accepted me at all. To this day. My middle son saw a picture of me as Barbara on Facebook and he was enraged. If he had a gun he’d have killed me for sure. I have not spoken to him in five years. He's threatened the rest of them: “If Dad is there, don't invite me.” He made a disaster out of the family, which is disheartening because I love my children, I love my grandchildren. I have seven grandchildren and two are his. I'm not invited to any of the kids' birthdays because his children are a similar age, and if they are going to be there, I’m not invited. There are about fifty, sixty people in my family. No one has opened their arms to me whatsoever. I pray every day that God will give me my son back. I want him back in my life before I die.
Now, on the brighter side, this is the best time of my life. I am having an absolute blast. I love who I am. I enjoy being a woman and feel natural now in my own skin. I wish I had another fifty years. But, I don't want to be one hundred years old if I'm decrepit and need help. It kills me to think that I would go to a nursing home. No frickin’ way. I want to stay healthy and die in my bed peacefully. No fanfare, no craziness. I've already made my funeral arrangements since my children will never bury me as Barbara. I could just visualize them coming to my funeral and seeing me in a men’s suit. That’s not going to happen. I told the funeral people, put me in a white sheet in the cheapest box you can find and send me out to Calverton National Cemetery because I’m a veteran. I told my ex and I told my daughter, “If you don't do as I say or what I want, I will haunt you until the day you die.” You know, so they gotta do what they gotta do.
Jess T. Dugan Bobbi, 83, Detroit, MI, 2014
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I have traveled extensively. It started out when I was in the Air Force. I was the “grandfather,” or whatever you'd call it, of the drone program. I mean, I played golf with presidents, with Jerry Ford and whatnot, and I certainly have met the older Bush and younger Bush and Reagan a couple of times. I've been in the White House. I've been up and down the Pentagon, all levels. And I've also worked extensively with the CIA.
Eleven years ago was my surgery, to this date almost, and I started hormones over twelve years ago. And I really have been in the cross-dressing business or the transgender business since I was probably four or five years old. I mean, I've got that history. But I didn't know some of that history until I tracked back later in life, when I saw this more obviously in front of me. I said, "Oh, my God, this is what I was doing when I was four and five years old." And of course, it all fits into a channel. But in that day – I'm talking about being born in 1930 – that was the Great Depression. There were no words for any of this. Except that I think my mother knew, because when I asked her to teach me to knit, she did, and she'd teach me some other things that I asked if I could do, like cross-stitch and whatnot. So all the basic clues were there all along.
I think people talk in either/or terms, right? Before transition and after. But to me, it’s really development. I'm proud of both lives. I'm proud of both me’s, if you see what I'm saying. And I feel it has been a remarkable thing to have happened to a person. I’m grateful. You can't just become a woman with a knife or a pill or anything like that. It takes a whole combination in a sequence, in a formation. You've got this time span, it's a learning experience, it's a little bit of everything. It's what I call going through the internship phase, stumbling through the adolescent phase, then going through the maturity phase.
I have gone through the dating routine. That was my internship. I had to go through the Internet, go out and stumble with it and flirt, and I got pretty good at it. I kinda worked at it. I'm not bad with words. And I could play peek-a-boo on Skype. Then I finally picked up Frank. I kidnapped him from the local bar up here one afternoon, an ex-Marine. And we dated for a long time. Finally one day, it was so nice that Sunday morning with our head on the pillows, I said, "Oh, I got something to tell you." And after I told him he says, "You're better than any woman I've ever met. Now, come on, Bobbi, we can drop that." Didn't care a damn. Where I live now, I think some people know for sure who I am and don't really care. But I also don't have it written on my forehead, so there are those that don't. They just take me as another old lady, a nice old lady.
Jess T. Dugan Cassandra, 50, San Diego, CA, 2017
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I identify as Cassandra. I'm a trans woman. I’ve always identified as female, but it took a while to get to that point, because I am originally from the Caribbean and the church is very strong there. I always knew that I was different. I remember going through puberty and asking my mom, "How come I don't have breasts?" and she said, "Well, it's because you're a boy." That didn’t seem right to me. It just didn't match. So that's how I identify. I identify as female. And that's how I live my life. I have always felt that way, but I never truly expressed it until I left the islands, just before my twenty-first birthday.
I needed to leave the Caribbean. All through school I was bullied and picked on. I had been attacked a few times, beaten up, and had people throw stones at me because of who I was. I knew that if I stayed there, I would not survive. So, I had to flee. I went to immigration and filed for political asylum. Two or three weeks later, I got a call to come up to the office. I’d never ever been in one of those offices, one of those waiting rooms with a sea of people sitting there. They were calling people up. There were lots of families coming from the Middle East and different countries, trying to stay together. One by one, their cases were being denied, so I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to have to go home.” I started to get all sweaty and scared. And then when I came up, she said, "Well, good news, your application has been approved." I almost hit the floor.
One of the biggest struggles is the discrimination we face of not being able to walk into a place and get a job. A lot of times, even in this day and age, a lot of girls are still being forced into sex work because they have to survive, you know what I’m saying? And I don’t want to say I am lucky, but I didn’t have to do that. I was able to transition on the job, which was good for me. That's the path my life took. But I’ve been out there in the street walking and being stopped by the police because they thought I was a prostitute. They see a person of color and assume they’re a prostitute, you know. A day that I’d like to see is a day when we're not judged by the color of our skin, but by our character. People say they don’t see color, but that's an insult. Because I’m a woman of color, so if you don’t see my skin color, then you don’t see me.
Last year more than twenty trans women of color were murdered, but nothing has been done about that. We have to stand up and say something and do something about it. You see all these things happening with gay rights and marriage equality. Ok, well that’s fine, that's you, but as a trans woman, what's in that brown bag for me? There's nothing. At the end of the day, they still slam the door in my face. At the end of the day, we're still forced to go stand on the corner to make ends meet. And possibly, probably, be murdered. That's very upsetting, when you look at that and say, "Wow, that could have been me." Some people just don't seem to care. Because if they did care, they would do something about it. Whenever there is a fundraiser and they want to have somebody perform, they reach out to the girls because we’re entertainers. But then when my sisters are dying in the street, I don’t see you marching in the street to help me, to bring attention to it. See, I know what it's like, and that's why I live openly, because I know that by my keeping the door open, and conversation open, it’s going to make it easier and better for the next generation.
When I was five years old, I found my older brother’s first communion suit. It was a very cool looking suit, white and double-breasted, and it fit me perfectly. I wouldn’t take it off. I wore it every day. Day in and day out, until my parents got so tired of seeing it on me, they turned it into a Halloween costume as a way to get rid of it. When I was older, I played in this little rock band and one time when I was over at my friend’s house I heard his mother mention a story about a person named Christine Jorgenson who had “changed sex.” I couldn’t keep my mind on practice after that! I wanted to find out more about this person, but you couldn’t Google it, of course, and so it took me months to find it. I was finally able to piece together that this was a person who knew their gender and went somewhere and there were people who could help.
A little after my eighteenth birthday, I was thinking I was gonna have to go to Denmark or Sweden or who knows where, but I found out there was a gender identity clinic right in Cleveland, Ohio. My transition took about three years, and at that time it was very regimented with the Harry Benjamin standards of care. I worked with a wonderful group of people. They wanted to learn from me and it felt mutual. Of course, it was all still their call, everything.
I ended up finding my way to ministry years later, and I had hoped I could share my story, but that was the early ’80s with Reagan, Anita Bryant, you know, all of those wonderful souls. After I was ordained, I moved to Idaho and had two little churches. Later I moved to a church in Portland, and after many years of being terrified that my church was going to find out and throw me out into the cold, I began to break something open in myself. It just continued to grow and once that crack happened, I felt like it was time.
I was not out to my children yet, but Deborah, my wife, and I knew we wanted our children to know before it was public. So we had to figure out how to do that, and that opened the door to everything else. At this point, three of our children are very supportive and very proud of us, but two of our children have decided the stigma is too much and don’t want to be around us. It’s very painful. We’re still reeling from that.
Last year I hosted a one-day retreat specifically for transgender and genderqueer people about spiritual practices and sources of strength. I want to continue to do these retreats as a source of community building and spiritual empowerment. It was wonderful. There was one person who grew up Methodist and hadn’t been in a church in over ten years, and he reflected on how wonderful it was for him to be back in that environment. It was a really positive experience, seeing people feel welcome in that space. I am looking forward to continuing this work.
Jess T. Dugan Dee Dee Ngozi, 55, Atlanta, GA, 2016
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My middle name is Ngozi, which means God’s blessing. I was speaking on HIV and my journey with HIV in the church one night and this African minister just jumped up and said, “You’re Ngozi!” I said, “Uh, what do that mean?” and he said, “It means God’s blessing. You have God’s blessing.” So I adopted that name when I sent my name change in and then I had my last name changed to my husband’s and then we was married. I served collard greens, and ham hock, and baked cakes and he’s just as happy as a lark after the twenty-five years we’ve been together.
This coming into my real, real fullness of knowing why I was different is because I was expressing my spirit to this world. And I didn’t know how God felt about it but I believe in God and I have a deep spiritual background and I talk with the Holy Spirit constantly who’s taken me from the Lower West Side doing sex work to being at the White House.
We created the first trans ministry in our church and I sat on the “mother board” with the other mothers. One day, mother Gladys asked me to come and sit down there with them. And after we had our little meeting, after church, Miss Gladys went to do something in the office and then they surrounded me and said, “What gives you the right to be here on this mothers’ board? We don’t understand it.” I said, “Because I’m a mother to the ones you can’t love. The ones that you cannot be a mother to, that you throw out on the street every day. Those are my children. The ones you throw away.” I said, “That’s why I’m here.” You could hear a pin drop, nobody said nothing. They went on and accepted me and said, “Come on girl, sit down.”
I’d go the clinic for my HIV, I would do stuff. I’d push patients, walk them to the car, sing church songs. I was just having a ball while I was waiting for my appointment. And a guy saw me one day that had an agency, and he said, “Miss Dee Dee, you work down here?” I said, “No.” He said, “I got a job for you.” And that was God just setting me in right there in that clinic with my own desk and I was my own boss. I could go to work as myself. The first day I got on the train with my little briefcase and my little suit on with the other people that were going to work. And when I got to the front door of the clinic, the Spirit stopped me and said, “Look across the street.” I said, “Look across the street?” So I looked. Then I saw flashes of me jumping in and out of cars on that corner, and I remembered I used to run girls off that corner. That was my corner. He said, “Now look how long it took for you to cross the street.” I could have lapsed right there on that sidewalk. This had come full circle now.
Jess T. Dugan,Dee Dee Ngozi, 55, Atlanta, GA, 2016
Jess T. Dugan Duchess Milan, 69, Los Angeles, CA, 2017
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I just know I’m me. I don’t think in terms of names and forms and all that. It doesn't matter. I’m just myself and that's who I am. I am at peace with myself. It is the most wonderful feeling in the world because you’re never in a hurry to get somewhere, you know, to prove to anyone that you’re who you know you are. I know who I am, and what other people think about me is none of my business. So that’s who I am. I identify as the Duchess.
I knew that I might lose family, that people might reject me. But I weighed that, and I thought, “If I lose everything and everybody, but I keep me, that's all that matters. That's all that matters, because I'm not going to live a life that I'm not happy in, for other people. Why? It doesn't make any sense.” So I put my money down and took my chances. My family accepted me. They came to accept me, and I've had kids around me, I've gone to all the weddings, all the funerals, and it's a situation that everybody just thinks of me as who I am. It's not even an issue anymore. "Oh, you mean her? Oh, that's just Auntie.”
My grandmother was a country woman, and she had a lot of sayings. I always heard all my life, “This is how it is. This is what it is. If you plant tomatoes, you're going to pick tomatoes. Okay? Don't plant bell peppers and then look for tomatoes. Okay?” And so many people do that! And then they end up with the bell peppers and say, "Well, I don't like this.” Well, of course not, honey, because you were going for tomatoes. So always go for what you know you feel!
My mother said when you die, you stand there before the light, and you say, "Was I worthy of myself to know that I have liked me?" Okay? I like me. Okay? And I will tell the whole chorus, honey, "I like me." I don't hurt anybody, I don't do anybody wrong, you know. I’ve dealt with everything I can, as much as I can. So just find that inside yourself and take time with that person. Faults, flaws, wishes, all of it, it doesn't matter. We're not going to get it all. None of us gets it all. Okay? But what we do have, we can polish. We can polish it, honey, till it blinds them.
Jess T. Dugan,Duchess Milan, 69, Los Angeles, CA, 2017
Jess T. Dugan Gloria, 70, Chicago, IL, 2016
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I identify myself as a female. I’ve always identified myself as a female. From a little tot, I knew who I was then, you know? And people say, “How do you, at an early age, know who you are?” I’ve always felt that way so that’s who I am. The men in my family, they were sort of apprehensive about me, but the women were strong. They wore the pants in my family. My mother would tell them, “This is your child, this is our baby, and you’re going to love my baby because you love me.” And that’s the way it was.
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, that woman was amazing. She was there for me all the time. And my mother. My mother was a Jet centerfold model, and a dancer, and she was beautiful. I came up in a household with beautiful women. My great aunt Fannie lived to be 103. She taught school in slavery days when they weren’t supposed to learn how to read. But she went on and she taught school, she became a teacher, and I would go to her house and sit up in her house and we would talk. She would give me words of wisdom. She would tell me, “Baby, you are you and don’t let nobody change you.” And I would sit there and look at her in amazement.
The inspiration for the charm school, I would have to say, was between my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt Fannie. All these women were amazing. They wore gloves, slips up under their dresses. My grandmother would teach me how to sit down at a table, how to break bread. Being raised by these amazing women and learning the techniques to life, that gave me the inspiration when I went to the Center on Halsted and saw these wild women, you know, trans young people, acting a fool and cutting up, and I thought, “Well, maybe they need some help.” And they appreciated me so they came up with the name Momma Gloria. And I said, “Ok, I accept that.” That was them being respectful, calling me their mother. They’ll say, “Oh yeah, this is my gay mother, Momma Gloria.”
I’m a senior citizen. I made it to seventy and a lot of them won’t make it, they won’t make it at all. Because most of them die from drugs, from sexual disease or they’re murdered. They ask me questions like, “Well, Momma Gloria, how did you get through?” I say, “I got through with love from my family and the grace of God.” That’s how I got through. You have to have some stability and you have to have some kind of class, some charm about yourself. I never was in the closet. The only time I was in the closet was to go in there and pick out a dress and come out of the closet and put it on.
Jess T. Dugan Hank, 76, and Samm, 67, Little Rock, AR, 2016
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Samm: Hank didn’t know she was a girl until she was around eleven or twelve. She was always the boy in the family. If it was Thanksgiving, Mom and the girls cooked dinner while she and Dad went hunting. Her mother even customized her clothes. Every Easter, everybody got new blue jeans and yellow T-shirts. The girls got those blue jeans that zipped up the side, but Hank always got the fly front. The girls got a regular plain yellow T-shirt but Hank’s mother would create a pocket on hers so that it would be just like her dad’s.
Hank: But they didn’t call me “he” or “him,” they just called me Hank.
Samm: They knew that Hank was different from her sisters and Hank’s dad was excited, I guess, about having this “boy,” and Hank’s mom didn’t object. Her father would put her in boxing matches with older boys and he was really proud. Once in a while some relatives would show up and say to her dad, “Hey, you are going to make that girl funny.” And Dick would tell them to mind their own business and leave Hank alone. And that was simply it.
Hank: It was a lot like in the olden days, you know, there were a lot of people around like me and people just expected us to become “unmarried aunts” or “fancy boys” and nobody ever confronted you with it. My father would say things like, “Oh, this one will never get married.” If I heard him say that today I would say, “Oh, he’s telling them I am gay.” Only I didn’t have those words for it back then.
But when I was twelve, my parents decided that it was time for me to be a girl. This was a very strenuous thing for me because, of course, I didn’t want to be a girl. They started trying to work me into being a girl but by then my identity was already set. I was totally me. I always say, “I’m just Hank. I’m not he, I’m not she, I’m just Hank. I’m who I’ve always been.” But my father and mother decided that for my birthday they should give me some girl perfume. Perfume wasn’t something that I was familiar with. Of course, my sisters had perfume but that was for girls! And so, I was broken hearted. I mean, they could have cut me with a knife and hurt me less than saying, “Okay, now you are going to be like a girl.” Later on, when I was twenty-one, I went into the military, which took me away from them and everybody.
Samm: But there were points in the military that were very difficult. She ended up being investigated for homosexuality and examined psychiatrically, and the army ended up putting it in writing that “while she had a pretty face, she was very masculine.”
Hank: I loved the military, but I thought there was no future there for me because of the stress of the investigation. I finally went to my superior and said, “Either you are going to stop the investigation on me or you are going to charge me on something, because I can’t go on like this.” It was a very traumatic experience for me.
Jess T. Dugan,Hank, 76, and Samm, 67, Little Rock, AR, 2016
Jess T. Dugan Helena, 63, Chicago, IL, 2013
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I feel very isolated. I don’t feel whole. There’s still that hole in my middle, the stomach is not filled, I’m not fed completely. And I wonder whether or not I will ever have that feeling of being embraced. When I pretended to be a gay male I could pretend to be a part of the gay community, and it looked good on paper and on the surface. Sometimes it worked. But as trans it doesn’t work. You have to find a collection of trans friends that you can depend on.
My roommate warned me. She said, “Let me get this straight. You want to be a middle-aged, black woman. Oh yeah? Really?” And I said, “Yeah. Look out world, here I come.” You have to have a sense of humor and choose your battles very carefully, because they do have emotional ramifications that produce stress. I try to cut down on stress. It’s not productive. One of the reasons I switched over to the Afrocentric clothing and the hair and all of that is I don’t like where the mainstream puts women, visually. And it’s all visual. It’s like we don’t have any insides. So I thought, “Well, okay. I’m already isolated.” The advantage to being isolated, it gives you permission to really be who you are, because you think nobody really cares. And I’m tired of trying to prove something. So I’m just gonna be.
Every day I try to do one thing for someone else that I don’t necessarily know. That helps me not feel isolated. They say you’re not really giving until you can feel it. So if you’ve got five dollars and you give four of them away you feel it. I heard some kids saying, “Ma, can we have some fruit? We haven’t had fruit in a long time. We haven’t had fruit since you got that check from the IRS.” I thought, “My God, it’s June.” When did she get that check? And they really wanted this fruit. I could see the pain on her face, a mother having to say no. And there were four of them. So, I went up to the register, because they know me in Joe’s on 95th Street. And I said, “When they come up, all this fruit that I brought to you is for them. And I’m gonna pay for it. And you better not tell them. Just put it in their cart. And if they say anything, say, ‘Somebody wanted the kids to have the fruit.’ That’s it.” One nice thing a day.
Jess T. Dugan Jay, 59, New York, NY, 2015
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I’m a pretty classic transgender man, as I see it, because from my earliest recollections as a tiny child I experienced myself as a boy in a girl’s body. I felt that some dreadful mistake had been made and I didn’t get the body I was supposed to. I prayed every night to God to make me wake up a boy the way I was supposed to be. And that orientation never changed throughout the whole trajectory of my life. That said, I was also a political activist, an LGBT activist. For a long time, society identified me as a lesbian and seemed to ignore my transgender status. Back then, in the 1950s and ’60s, society wasn’t really all that nuanced in how it looked at LGBT people. We were all sort of lumped into the same boat.
My partner, Eleanor, was a big time activist. She was one of the most outspoken people in our community. But she had a huge stroke when she was fifty-six and from there on I was either taking care of her or she was in a nursing home where she was horribly abused. I mean, horribly abused. Eleanor had bedsores from lack of care and neglect at the nursing home and this woman would come in and take this rag and wipe between Eleanor’s legs while screaming at her, “This is for Joy, isn’t it? This is for Joy. You’re going to hell! You should repent or you are going to hell when you die. You’re going to burn in hell, you pervert.” Joy is my previous name and how the nursing home knew me. So that is what they inflicted on her, they basically rubbed the bacteria from her anus and genital area into her bedsores.
Then I got cancer and I was facing discrimination where doctors wouldn’t even give me my biopsy results. The man who was supposed to be my breast surgeon wanted to send me out to psychiatry. Wanted to send me to psychiatry before giving me any breast cancer care! And he didn’t even call me to give me my biopsy results. I didn’t even know that I was sick for a long time.
One good thing I can at least say is that when Eleanor received end-of-life care, the doctors provided the most dignified, compassionate care that we had ever received. But part of it is that I was finally passable by then and they were treating us like we were a heterosexual couple for the first time ever. It was like night and day, the respect, almost reverence, that staff would give. They treated us like we were gold. That experience really highlighted how incredibly different it is to just be treated like a normal human being, and, you know, we had gotten so used to being treated like we were garbage. It was really shocking just to receive standard care. And I have to wonder how different everything would have been with Eleanor’s care, in particular, had we always been perceived that way.
If you hear our story and it resonates, it is your job to keep holding the torch. No one else’s. Please care about the movement as much as I did, as Eleanor did, as we all did. We put our lives on the line for this and there are people who believe in justice and fairness and the morally right thing to do and we have got to stick together and we can’t give up. I will always be with you and watching down wherever I am. I just pray you can soak up strength and love from each other and be everything you were meant to be.
Jess T. Dugan Joanne, 90, Long Island, NY, 2016
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I always felt on the outside, different from everyone. But I was a very hard believer in reality, in what’s possible. I was born in 1925 and being a woman was not possible. I never felt I was female; I felt I wanted to be female. When I hit puberty, I knew I wanted to be a girl, but I kept it a secret. I didn’t know I could leave the house as a woman until I was in my eighties! But once I did, there was no stopping me. I was in therapy for a year, and I found out my big problem was shame. I was afraid to go out in the street as Joanne, so one time I went out at two o’clock in the morning to mail a letter. I couldn’t get back in the car fast enough! I thought I used up all the heartbeats for my whole life right then and there. Once I got home, I said I’d never do that again. But I had to. It was something that was burning in me for years. I didn’t know there was a whole community out there. I didn’t know anything!
This was fourteen years after my wife died. I had a wonderful relationship with my wife. We were made for each other. I can’t say I transitioned because of my wife passing. She died and I was still drawing the blinds every time I put on women’s clothes in the house. It was fourteen more years before I found out it is possible to do what I'm doing, that there are other people doing it. I mean, I read books and stuff, but I thought it was all fiction. I never thought it was possible to be anything but a man.
I have a son and a daughter. They both have their own families. It wasn’t easy telling my daughter, but it was the hardest to tell my son. I’m rather methodical in the way that I think. An important step like that, I contemplated it for two weeks. I might have cried every time that I thought about it, but I planned for two weeks what I’d say, when I’d say it, where I’d say it. And I also wrote down what I feared. I feared I’d lose his respect. He reacted very much like his father would: no reaction. He read what my fears were and said, “I didn’t lose my respect for you.” When I told my daughter, my eyes were watering, the tears were running, and she hugged and kissed me. She could see the pain.
It would have been nice to transition when I was very young and not have had to hide and sneak and lie. But then again, I wouldn’t have had my life as a guy, and I wouldn’t have been married to a super wonderful woman and have terrific kids and wonderful grandchildren. Some trans women have a very bitter experience and they want to forget they were ever a man, but I enjoyed my life as a man. I don't want to forget that. If you want to know what a ninety-year-old thinks of life and what keeps her going, it’s fun and happiness. Everything has a humorous side to it. All you have to do is be creative enough to see it. I tell myself jokes all the time. Sometimes I tell them out loud, and even though I’m home alone, I burst out into laughter!
Jess T. Dugan Juli, 62, New York, NY, 2016
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I was the oldest of four kids, so I became the built-in babysitter. My parents would go out, and the first thing I would do was go to my mother's closet. I'd put on her makeup, put on her clothes, and try to make sure she didn't know I was in it. At age fourteen I met a girl who would eventually become my wife. At twenty, I came out to her as a cross-dresser. It was hard for her, but she dealt with it. We got married when I was thirty, and five years later, we decided to have a child. I still lived and worked as a male. Our life was great, but I was starting to feel stifled because there was never any private time to dress, to go out and be me.
In 1999, my father came to live with us because he was very sick with emphysema. It was the best year of my life, taking care of him and spending time with him. Unfortunately, within a year, he passed away, and that rocked my world. He had me when he was twenty-three and he passed when he was almost seventy. I remember thinking, “Well, I have twenty-three years until I'm seventy. I'm pretty healthy. Assuming I have a longer life than he does, well, how long could it be? Let's say it's eighty, that means I have thirty-three years left. Well, I can reach back and look at thirty-three years ago and it just seems like last week, so that means I don't have a whole lot of time left.” That really pushed me towards wanting to get out and do more things. One of the first things I did was to start electrolysis, but it freaked my wife out because now I was starting to change my body. Once I started electrolysis, I started going to transgender events around the country. As the process continued, it got harder and harder for my wife. She basically couldn't deal with who I really was and we finally separated and divorced. We had been together thirty-eight years.
I started going to a Unitarian Universalist church as Juli, and while there I met a cisgender, heterosexual woman who I became “girl” friends with. I started having feelings for her, and I thought I was totally crazy, but it turns out that she was starting to get feelings for me as well. In the summer of 2008 I asked her out on a date, suggesting she meet “Terry,” my male persona. We had a really nice time. We went to dinner and took a drive along the beach. We continued to go out, sometimes I would be Terry, but more and more often I was Juli. A few months later, I moved in with her. Three years later we got married and have been married for five years. She still identifies as heterosexual and cisgender, but we laugh because when we go on vacation now, people think we're two old, crazy lesbians.
One important thing I've learned is that I was blessed with a certain set of circumstances and privileges that allowed me the opportunity to accomplish things and be successful. First of all, being born male, right away you've got three steps ahead. Second, being born white gives you another five steps. It's one thing to have to walk through a door and do whatever it is through that door, but there are some people who don’t have any doors, there’s only a wall. And I was constantly allowed a door. Whether I went through that door is one thing. Yes, great, I did and I'm proud of that, but the fact that I had doors that were there and not walls was a big thing.
Jess T. Dugan Louis, 54, Springfield, MA, 2014
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In the last few years I have seen tremendous growth in the transmasculine community. Keep in mind that in my generation, the notion of community was almost an intentional causality to the process. You were supposed to move away, never let anyone know your history, and move into isolation in order to exist. You needed to be heteronormative and have a specific way of being that fit the criteria of what this diagnosis is supposed to look like. So the notion of building community in that way… how could you if you don’t meet the standards? The notion that community is available to us is a relatively new phenomenon.
That being said, I find that the majority of trans men of color choose to live non-disclosed, low- or no-disclosure for economic reasons, for safety reasons, and for family reasons. That is a perfectly viable choice, but it does make it difficult to build community, so some of us who are fully disclosed have to serve as the conduits to connect us to each other. We have a black trans men’s advocacy site on Facebook that has almost 500 members. There is a group that just started called My Brother’s Keeper in Atlanta. When I meet other men in transition, we have a discussion about whether they want to live out and open or low- or no-disclosure. It allows me to direct them to others. I think that is critical to build community, specifically among trans men of color. There are so many other oppressions and variables that trans men and trans women of color face that it’s not as easy as hanging a rainbow flag out your window. Well, how’s that gonna work? You gonna pay my bills? Are you going to walk with me everywhere I go and be my personal bodyguard? So the notion that “out” is always better assumes a safety that many of us, especially trans women of color, cannot count on.
I’m so excited that in a relatively short slice of history, a community has grown up around me of vibrant, creative, amazing people: men, women, and others who are doing such amazing work in the realm of spirituality, sciences, art, and politics. It’s like having a gazillion nieces and nephews and other kids and being really proud of all of them.
Years and years ago when I was tiny kid I just wanted to grow up to be a husband and a father, but in that time and place it was completely impossible. So the notion that I have those things in my life now is nothing short of miraculous. And how many people in the world can say that the dream they had that was impossible, they are now living it? It is an amazing and surreal and awe-inspiring dream come true. So I am extremely grateful more than anything else, and I will continue to seek that gratitude in ways that I can and continue to be an example to people who are really struggling. The impossible is possible. Likely, maybe not. Easy, most defiantly not. But possible. So that is a joy and I will continue doing that until I kick the bucket.
Jess T. Dugan Rachel, 86, St. Louis, MO, 2015
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I was born in 1928. When I was twelve, I remember my mother catching me in her dress at home. She took me to a psychiatrist or something like that, and he scared the hell out of me, but that didn’t stop me feeling the way I felt. I grew up and married my first wife. I got by. It was not anything terrible, but things were not right. My second marriage lasted thirty-nine years and actually, during that time, I did not want to be a woman. But then my wonderful wife died, and it came back.
Four years after she died, I was just beside myself and I didn’t know what to do, so I went to a psychiatrist and said, “Hey, what’s with me?” He told me there was nothing wrong with me and that I was transgender. For a long time, I couldn’t sleep because I would wake up and think “What can I do? How can I do this?” But one night I woke up and said, “Why can’t I? What is stopping me?” And I realized nothing was. So, I changed my name and sold my home and long story short, ended up living here in St. Louis.
I still get a lot of “sir” when I’m out, but I get “ma’am” also and it makes me feel good. The other day, I was putting up a shelf at home and the anchors I was putting into the drywall were not splitting. So I went to the hardware store at the corner and said, “What’s the problem? This one has been in the wall and it is not split.” And the guy just said flippantly, “It shouldn’t do that,” and turns around and just goes on his way! Like I’m some stupid woman, I guess.
I want to be accepted as a woman, but if I am not, I don’t mind. One of the neighbors won’t have anything to do with me, but I don’t care, because who is she? She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know why I am doing this or what I am like or anything. I do not want to be directed by anybody. I want to do what I want to do and that is really the end of it. When I finally decided to do this I thought, “You’d better do it now, because you are eighty-four and how long are you going to last? And do you want to finish it that way or do you want to finish as Rachel?”
Jess T. Dugan Shira at sunrise (from behind), 2020
Jess T. Dugan,Shira at sunrise (from behind), 2020
From the Every Breath We Drew series
20 x 24" and 32 x 40" pigment print
Edition of 10 + 3 AP's, 5 + 2 AP's
Jess T. Dugan Sky, 64, and Mike, 55, Palm Springs, CA, 2017
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I identify as a polyamorous gay trans man, primarily with a bear bent. A gay man that happens to be very different from many other gay men, but definitely polyamorous. My partner and I have been together a little more than twenty-five years, and that was the core beginning of our relationship.
My way here was as part of the women’s community. I failed miserably as a lesbian. I had sex with too many men. So it just wasn’t right. I moved to San Francisco in 1986 and became very involved in the women’s SM community. I am one of the founders of International Ms. Leather. I had to hide being a trans man for a while because I thought they would take my “card” away. Well, I finally committed and said, “This is not right.” So that’s when I began to transition and never looked back.
I also identify as a dad. My son just turned eleven last week. He’s actually my grandson; my daughter passed away six years ago from cancer. When she passed, he realized very quickly that he didn’t have a mom and he didn’t have a dad, so we let him figure out how that felt to him and what he wanted to do about it. And he decided he wanted dads. I think he’s pretty clear that we’re grandpas, but it doesn’t suit him. We let him choose names for us as well, so I’m Papa and my partner is Daddy Bear. And he always introduces us as his dads.
I’ve long thought that there’s no better school than the world. So we, the little guy and I, will hit the road full-time soon in our RV. We have lots and lots of plans. I’ve had the good fortune of being able to travel anywhere I want to – and I travel a fair amount – and not get any sorts of flack. People assume I’m either a Vietnam vet, a biker, or someone totally crazy you better not fuck with. Either of those three things tends to work for me until I open my mouth and a purse falls out.
I live in abundance of many things: experiences, family, friends, serendipity. Living in abundance is what keeps us healthy and happy. You can’t be shackled by the minutiae of stress and expect to have a full life, and to be fearful feeds into that minutiae. Life really begins when you step out of fear. I’m gonna go where I’m gonna go. I’m gonna go see what I’m gonna see. He and I are going to have adventures without living in fear!
Jess T. Dugan,Sky, 64, and Mike, 55, Palm Springs, CA, 2017
Jess T. Dugan Sky, 64, Palm Springs, CA, 2016
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I identify as a polyamorous gay trans man, primarily with a bear bent. A gay man that happens to be very different from many other gay men, but definitely polyamorous. My partner and I have been together a little more than twenty-five years, and that was the core beginning of our relationship.
My way here was as part of the women’s community. I failed miserably as a lesbian. I had sex with too many men. So it just wasn’t right. I moved to San Francisco in 1986 and became very involved in the women’s SM community. I am one of the founders of International Ms. Leather. I had to hide being a trans man for a while because I thought they would take my “card” away. Well, I finally committed and said, “This is not right.” So that’s when I began to transition and never looked back.
I also identify as a dad. My son just turned eleven last week. He’s actually my grandson; my daughter passed away six years ago from cancer. When she passed, he realized very quickly that he didn’t have a mom and he didn’t have a dad, so we let him figure out how that felt to him and what he wanted to do about it. And he decided he wanted dads. I think he’s pretty clear that we’re grandpas, but it doesn’t suit him. We let him choose names for us as well, so I’m Papa and my partner is Daddy Bear. And he always introduces us as his dads.
I’ve long thought that there’s no better school than the world. So we, the little guy and I, will hit the road full-time soon in our RV. We have lots and lots of plans. I’ve had the good fortune of being able to travel anywhere I want to – and I travel a fair amount – and not get any sorts of flack. People assume I’m either a Vietnam vet, a biker, or someone totally crazy you better not fuck with. Either of those three things tends to work for me until I open my mouth and a purse falls out.
I live in abundance of many things: experiences, family, friends, serendipity. Living in abundance is what keeps us healthy and happy. You can’t be shackled by the minutiae of stress and expect to have a full life, and to be fearful feeds into that minutiae. Life really begins when you step out of fear. I’m gonna go where I’m gonna go. I’m gonna go see what I’m gonna see. He and I are going to have adventures without living in fear!
Jess T. Dugan Tracie, 65, San Diego, CA, 2017
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I identify as female and ever since I can remember, I felt female. When I was a teenager I found a gay coffee house where I felt nurtured, you know, as opposed to not being acknowledged at home as my true self. At nineteen, I came out in the underground LGBT community in San Francisco. It was the early ’70s. There was this whole society of people trying to get along and be free and be part of something. All of us were trying to survive and it was very gender expansive in the beginning; the labels weren’t really important.
I went underground, but I carried a burden of nonacceptance, self-loathing, and self-hate for almost twenty years. Drugs and alcohol were where I found peace. Then a string of events happened in 1989. I went to jail and I thought I was going to prison and I thought I might have HIV. I had a lengthy record of prostitution and petty theft, so I thought I was going to the penitentiary. But in the end, I only got six months. It was then that I was like, “Bing bing bing!” and I realized I had a chance to turn in another direction. Another girl had been to Stepping Stone, an LGBT recovery program, and so I started calling them every week before I got out, asking if I could come when I was released. I’ll never forget, it was Christmas Eve 1990 when I was released and Stepping Stone was there waiting for me.
I was at Stepping Stone for twenty-one months. I was the longest resident ever there. And that was my journey. One day I remember taking all my clothes off, and looking at myself in the mirror with boobs and male genitalia and I really began to look at myself and say, “This is it, this is who I am. I accept my skinny body, I accept my size thirteen feet, I accept my genitalia. I accept everything.” I needed that acceptance to heal myself. I went to school, became a counselor, and I worked there for six years. This was during the early transgender movement, and we were building support systems for people. I’m very proud of that.
I still work at the Family Health Center and still do support services. For me to be a part of that process, it just warms my heart and makes me really, really happy. That I can do that before I die, that’s the shit right here. That’s it. Looking forward, I hope for good health and peace. As an African American trans woman, I have beaten the odds. It’s awful that there are data that show that African American trans women’s life expectancy is thirty-five; well, I’ll be sixty-six in a couple of months! I’m going to be eight-five and I’m going to still be here, giving presents, sharing history, educating, and loving those who come behind me.
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