J HOUSTON – TUCK AND ROLL
2021-05-03This desire to find a place to belong can be greatly complicatedby being a Trans or Queer person. As a photographer, J Houston has harnessedthe large-format camera’s ability to take the raw material of the world andcreate a place all their own. In the pictures, being Trans and Queer is thedefault, where there is no struggle for acceptance, just the ease with whichthe subjects welcome the camera into their intimate spaces, creating room forthe artist and by extension the viewer.
The people in Houston’s pictures exist in settings that could be anywhere, witheveryday objects like yoga balls, seat cushions and carpeting that seem tingedwith magic and heightened importance. Houston’s pictures come alive in themundaneness of the portrait subjects’ everyday emotions, romance, solitude,dignity, sadness, vulnerability, pleasure. It is the drama of a sharedhumanity, the little building blocks of experience, that create a community inthe pictures. Images, which in their making involved meeting, getting to knowand becoming part of subjects’ lives form a small Trans-Queer utopia thatmanifest from the art into the world.
Exhibition runs through to May 30th, 2021
THE JAVA PROJECT
252 Java Street
Broklyn
NY 11222
