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[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

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[Elle Pérez, Artist]

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I love that space where[br]something is a photograph

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and not necessarily a word.

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Or, you haven't put the words[br]together for what you're looking at yet.

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Something can live there in photography[br]and not have to be definitive.

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[Elle Pérez Works Between the Frame]

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My cousin Alex is an[br]entertainment wrestler in the Bronx.

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I sent him a message,[br]"Can I come and photograph your show?"

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And he was like,[br]"Yeah, just don't tell our family."

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When I was photographing the wrestlers,

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what I was interested in was[br]the choreography of the wrestling match,

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because the thing about entertainment wrestling[br]is that everything is scripted

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and everything is choreographed.

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And there are ways that you[br]would move your body

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to look more authentically[br]like you were in pain.

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If you were hanging like[br]Joe is hanging on the ropes,

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this extended moment[br]becomes more sculptural.

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[LAUGHS]

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I don't think there's a way to

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involve a camera without[br]immediately involving a kind of fiction.

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All of this is about an aspiration[br]toward acting.

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[SUBWAY NOISES]

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In a way, my work has always[br]been made collaboratively.

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Because of that, that's why[br]I don't think of it as documentary.

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Because my work had such a raw,[br]visceral relationship to emotional authenticity,

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people often would recommend[br]that I would go into documentary.

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But I could never figure out[br]the ethics of it.

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I was yelled at by the editor of[br]National Geographic

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for my photos looking misleading,

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because they looked like[br]documentary images,

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but they actually were made[br]by staging them.

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It looks effortless.

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They're still pretty set up.

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[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

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Definitely the geography of[br]where a lot of the pictures are made--

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whether it's in the Bronx or Puerto Rico--

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it's really important, and[br]I don't think about it too much at all.

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I think about them as being[br]more related to people.

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They're all made from really strong relationships.

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But how do you show something[br]that relates to a particular experience

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without showing the spectacle of it?

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The photograph of the hand,

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it has such a visceral, physical feeling

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of what two bodies could be capable of.

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You can use photography to depict[br]things that you actually cannot picture.

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It has so much to do with identity,[br]and it has so much to do with

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how surfaces have the ability[br]to contain the traces of an experience.

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A binder is a chest compression garment that,

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initially, it was designed for men who[br]had excess breast tissue.

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Then it got co-opted by[br]the transmasculine community.

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The photograph that I made of my binder

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was only possible after that object[br]had been worn for, like, five years.

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It had become frayed.

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The sweat and pain of that garment,

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all of it is visible in the fabric itself--

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and then in how it's photographed with[br]an extreme focus on precise details.

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The pictures focus on something like a seam,

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or on someone's tattoos,

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or on someone's face.

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Then when you see it at a scale,

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you're able to have a certain[br]proximity to detail

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that you can't have in just[br]your day-to-day relationship.

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These giant wall collages that[br]I would use to draw from--

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whether it was drawing for writing,

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or drawing from text,[br]or text fragments--

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just looking at things and having[br]them be reflected back at me

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so that I can think about them.

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Then things slowly make[br]their way into the work.

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Form being related to queerness[br]because it's undefinable and unboundaried,

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it has to have such a space of possibility[br]within it to even be possible at all.

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Something like a photograph is then[br]like a perfect container,

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because it is not[br]actually ever definitive.