As a child, Okabe was shy and introverted. Imbued with pain and beauty, her photography illustrates her internal reality: “Perhaps taking photographs is an unconscious healing for my younger self,” she says
“When gender is a binary, it’s a battlefield,” said the queer author Kate Bornstein. “Get rid of the binary, and gender becomes a playground.”
If to be seen is to exist, we must not underestimate the power of photography to validate our experiences.
With the history of the medium anchored in the white male gaze, this collection celebrates artists who traverse new realms of agency and autonomy, exploring the important role that photography can play in visualising marginalised identities.