Buenos Aires

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Argentina | Saturday, October 16, 2010 | 5 photos

My photos tell a story about the city of the Buenos Aires. I’ve been living there for 5 months during the fall 2009 doing my fieldwork as a soon to be anthropologist. In Buenos Aires there are estimated 5000 transvestites. The Argentinean transvestites live a rough life usually expelled from home in a young age, living on the streets and providing them selves through prostitution, as their only option of survival - they told me. They are highly stigmatized in the Argentinean society, because of their gender practices and identities, which challenge the cultural and social accepted gender system. Thus they are daily experiencing discrimination and violent assaults from both people in the streets and the police.
These photographies are captured on the one day a year in an Argentine prostitute transvestites life, where they as a community feel recognized and noticed in society during The Pride March. The photos I have chosen tell the story about Buenos Aires and the colourful variety of gender expressions that every visitor notices. They also tell a story about the ambiguity about attention and recognition. They show how people feeling ignored by a whole society in their everyday life feel empowered by attention even though sensational. As the one behind the camera I felt a strong ambivalence with the exotic interest encapsulated in the spectators gaze in some of the photos, but my transvestite friends told me afterwards that they felt as stars just for one important moment in their lives.
I should be chosen to win this scholarship because I want to tell stories like this about people, cultures, places and moments. Moments with a significant meaning for a small marginalized community or a whole society. Both from a micro- or a macro perspective I find these stories crucial to visualize and share.