Have You Seen This Man?

2024. Photography, Mixed Media, Archive and Text.

A semi-fictionalised account of the period in my life when I was first coming to terms with my gender identity as a trans woman, beginning in 2015. This was a time when many within the transgender community were still living in the mindset that being so was shameful and something to be hidden. Consequently, it was advocated that to transition, one must move to a new place where nobody knows you and do their utmost to ‘pass’ as cisgender.

This mindset, born amidst a fear of being prejudiced for being visibly gender non-conforming, is damaging to those who do not wish to adhere to a rigid gender binary, such as myself.

‘Have You Seen This Man?’ is as much a cautionary tale as it is a document of a life lived in fear. Transition should not be a prescribed path, but an individual journey towards a place of your own making.

During this time in my life, this fear of judgement manifested in the form of nightmares in which I was being relentlessly pursued by thousands of snails.

At this time, I was also travelling regularly to spend time with my then-partner in the Pacific Northwest.

It was here that I became familiar with D.B. Cooper. A plane hijacker who, in 1971, received $200,000 in ransom money, before skydiving out of a plane into the night above the Columbia River in Washington state, directly above my partner’s home, never to be seen again.

The story of Cooper’s escape appealed to me in my mindset of hiding away at the time, but he was able to disappear precisely because he was so normal, an option not afforded to those who are gender non-conforming.

I confronted this fear, this want of many trans people to blend in, by retracing the steps of D.B. Cooper in search of a place to hide away from judgement.

In doing so, I came to find the power of being truly yourself. In standing out, rather than disappearing.