Upcoming Exhibition

Dear Friends, Please join me:
Eli J. VandenBerg: Prints and Drawings
Opening Reception: January 9, 2009, 6-8pm
The William Way GLBT Community Center
1315 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA
Work will be on view January 5 – February 27, 2009
On view will be prints and drawings from the last five years including work from the Passing Series, Body in Progress and brand new images of Philadelphia from the Place and Home series. Please email me for more information or send me your address if you'd like to receive a postcard for the show.

A Series of Questions Photo Project

I was recently made aware of a photo project currently looking for volunteers. It looks like it could be a really wonderful project and I appreciate the artists intent to examine trans and gender issues without exploiting the subjects. I personally am interested in participating and I encourage any other trans folks out there to do the same.

“A Series of Questions” is a photo project exploring the power dynamics inherent in the questions asked of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender-variant, and/or gender non-conforming people. Participants are photographed holding a sign upon which is written a question they have been asked. The questions are then turned on the viewer, shifting the dynamics under which they were originally asked, forming a larger series of questions which many of the people photographed face as a part of their daily lives.

Many documentary photographic works dealing with trans* issues and gender exploit the genders of these subjects, pointing to an “otherness” or inappropriately exoticizing; this body of work seeks to instead point to the transphobia, genderphobia, and gender-baiting that can become part of everyday interactions and lives, forming a more full picture of the various lived experiences."