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[talkingpictures2020]

Mariette Pathy Allen Chronicles of Gender Diversity

Today, gender is increasingly understood as a construct open to the interpretation of the individual. A Pantone of possibility rather than a brick-block binary. Such openness is a relatively new state of affairs. Not so long ago, exploring and expressing one’s non-binary psyche was something that must be kept totally hidden or run the risk of public ridicule, ostracism, and physical abuse.

It was in the context of this necessarily secretive world of non-conformist gender expression that the photographer Mariette Pathy Allen first became aware of men who dressed as women. It was to change the direction of her artmaking and, equally, to change the way male-to-female crossdressers were represented in the USA. Over the years she became an unofficial chronicler of the transgender and non-binary community and an activist ally. Her approach has remained constant: the caring and sensitive representation of all gender-diverse identities as part of a human continuum to which we all belong. A triumph of self-actualisation over simplistic convention.

Mariette Pathy Allen discusses her remarkable chronicle of gender diversity at Talking Pictures.

[maestrojedi13]

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