Carson Stachura captures a reality in which queer and trans people “can be seen, not just looked at”

Carson Stachura’s image making practice centres on their close friends and immediate community. Although the participants in their photographic work are everyday people that the photographer knows and loves, Carson’s images aim to create an entirely “otherworldly effect”. From set design, to lighting to visual cues and finer details, “the fact that these scenes are ‘produced’, is a means of rejecting the idea that the camera is an inherently neutral mediator”, they share.

Determined to make a space outside of the straight cis gaze, the photographer likes to use their visual work as an exercise in “collaborative world building”, through which queer and trans individuals in their community “can be seen, not just looked at”. Aware of the power of their perspective as a queer, trans photographer, in their portrait work they aim to pose an alternative lens under which “subjects can playfully exist as their most extravagant, expressive selves”.

Part archivist, part visual artist, the photographer’s practice is directly in conversation with depictions of trans identity across history and actively draws upon “a critical analysis of gender transgression within the twentieth century archive”, says Carson. Given that photography has historically been appropriated as a tool to “construct a materially violent and limited definition of gender expansiveness”, the photographer explains, their process of documenting hopes to allow for a shared and equal exchange between photographer and sitter.