On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories
Mark Seliger
Seliger didn’t plan his project to be about trans stories; he was thinking about people who had made their way to Christopher Street. Over the course of three summers of shooting, he understood that the neighborhood’s trans culture needed to be at the center of his work. It hardly needs to be said that Christopher Street is one of the country’s most important neighborhoods for LGBTQ rights and culture. It’s the home of Stonewall Inn where tensions between police and the community culminated in the bloody 1969 riots, and where the gay rights movement took off.
Seliger’s Christopher Street work is unlike his commercial studio portraits, for which the artist is known. These feel natural and off-the-cuff. Most are shot at night with flash. He often pairs his b/w portraits with informal interviews, such as this one with Dana Levinson:
"I was convinced that one day I was going to wake up and magically become a girl. Obviously that didn’t happen and I ended up having a total breakdown. I realized I had no choice—I either needed to transition and live authentically or I was going to get myself into an early grave—literally.”
Christopher Street has experienced massive gentrification since the 1990s that has driven out much of the queer community. Despite creating this project in the 2010s, well into the Village's yuppie era, Seliger succeeds in documenting stories of people who have found some sense of belonging and safety.
Seliger’s Christopher Street work is unlike his commercial studio portraits, for which the artist is known. These feel natural and off-the-cuff. Most are shot at night with flash. He often pairs his b/w portraits with informal interviews, such as this one with Dana Levinson:
"I was convinced that one day I was going to wake up and magically become a girl. Obviously that didn’t happen and I ended up having a total breakdown. I realized I had no choice—I either needed to transition and live authentically or I was going to get myself into an early grave—literally.”
Christopher Street has experienced massive gentrification since the 1990s that has driven out much of the queer community. Despite creating this project in the 2010s, well into the Village's yuppie era, Seliger succeeds in documenting stories of people who have found some sense of belonging and safety.
