dysphoria series

dysphoria is a photography series created by archi in collaboration with photographer jazz noble. the inspiration came from an impulse to go back to what queerness means to us: a connection with nature, chaotic, unpredictable, & immense. in the forest there is no gender and the body can be freed from language, it just exists and moves through space and time in its own way. nature reminds us nothing is constant in life and death.

gold organza fabric flows between the model and the forest, acting as a shield and a costume, both controlled and endured. the power dynamics are reflected by the elements of nature (moss, dead leaves, water and tall trees) which seem fragile yet all-encompassing. the sun rays decide where the movement appears, making every photograph a fixed point of an ever-changing landscape. the gilded appearance of the human-made material suggests an expensive and complex character, but it is subverted by its infinitely simple use and the desire to see it mingle with a “dirty” floor.

the trans body is just a body and it will soon return to the earth. in the span of a lifetime, society will decide to throw its most violent constructions at it, forever grieving a freedom too removed from their culture. without the violence, ‘trans’ doesn’t exist, neither does ‘cis’, neither does sex, neither do hierarchies and empires. only the seasons remain.

below is a text written by archi to accompany the photos.

imagine a corpse. yes, yes imagine death all over these words. the corpse is lying at peace, on the ground, it is not your corpse or mine, or it could be, but it has been rotting for so long you couldn’t recognise me. nature has done something quite eternal in the rotting, god-forsaken, in the sense that god has been consciously away for some time, and so nature has had to be god. from there, it’s silence.

when you get so close that you cannot make the human form anymore, you understand it is still moving. a million worms are eating at its skin, there is no more skin, you cannot see the skin, it is only worms, they come from inside and they will die there too. the truth is, death has never been so loud. the crawling of the worms is tv static muffled at maximum volume in the room next door. there’s a room next door and you are never in that room, you are always in the room next door. people are singing happy birthday but you cannot make up the lyrics because of the walls and the worms, they’ve been singing happy birthday for years but you cannot be sure that that is what they are singing because you have never heard the lyrics. i think, and correct me if i’m wrong, it has been your birthday. how can the voices echo to infinity when you are lying down in the smallest room of our house? someone has placed a candle in your eye and it has melted onto the worms and to be quite honest all you can think about is how beautiful that whole scene is. the walls are empty, clinical, which is wrong, because i just said it has been years, and someone must live there, and they’ve never thought to decorate the walls? is it because the walls are sweating with blood, mum? it is important that the scene zooms in on the candle because fire is the opportunity for a scream but if you scream the worms and everyone at the table might crawl in and although the feeling of a dozen hands inside my throat is what i have felt every second i have been awake i must try and be the bigger person, so i promise. i promise i will devour the world at my own funeral. do you understand us now?