By Gretchen Feil
The Cloud Dancers Foundation’s mission to serve aging LGBTQ+ populations, with an emphasis on adult and senior transgender individuals, is incredibly necessary due to the fact that there are not many resources that support aging trans individuals. There are also few efforts made to document the histories and lived experiences of aging trans populations, which makes it extremely difficult for people both outside and inside the trans and gender-nonconforming community to gain awareness about the issues that aging trans individuals face, let alone the beauty and depth that their identities bring to their lives and the lives of those around them.
Photographer Jess T. Dugan is working to combat this lack of resources on and for aging trans communities through their artistic activism. Dugan and their partner, Vanessa Fabbre, who has a background in social work and gerontology (the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging), published the first edition of their book, To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults, in 2018. To Survive on this Shore is an anthology of interviews that Dugan and Fabbre conducted with aging trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) individuals. These interviews are paired alongside the carefully personalized photographs that Dugan shot of the participants who chose to open up about their life experiences.
Louis, 54, Springfield, MA, 2014
“Years and years ago when I was a tiny kid I just wanted to grow up to be a husband and a father, but in that time and place it was completely impossible. So the notion that I have those things in my life now is nothing short of miraculous. And how many people in the world can say that the dream they had that was impossible, they are now living it? It is an amazing and surreal and awe-inspiring dream come true. So I am extremely grateful more than anything else, and I will continue to seek that gratitude in ways that I can and continue to be an example to people who are really struggling. The impossible is possible. Likely, maybe not. Easy, most definitely not. But possible. So that is a joy and I will continue doing that until I kick the bucket.”
In their own interview included in To Survive on this Shore, Dugan and Fabbre discussed their experiences while carrying out this five year project. Dugan told interviewer Karen Irvine “With this project, I wanted to create representations of many different ways of living and aging as a trans person. I also wanted to record the history of people who, in many cases, paved the road for the world we live in now. I worried their stories were at risk of being lost or forgotten, and I wanted to record and preserve them.”
In order to create these representations, Dugan and Fabbre spent five years traveling across the United States, seeking out TGNC individuals who agreed to share their stories (much like we try to do at The Cloud Dancers Foundation!). We reached out to Dugan to learn a little more about their interviewing process, and they told us that “Seeking a diverse group of individuals was very important to us and was built into the project from the very beginning. We were mindful of wanting to create a project that felt diverse and complex, but also balanced in terms of the stories and life narratives being shared.”
Dee Dee Ngozi, 55, Atlanta, GA, 2016
“We created the first trans ministry in our church and I sat on the ‘mother board’ with the other mothers. One day, mother Gladys asked me to come and sit down there with them. And after we had our little meeting, after church, Miss Gladys went to do something in the office and then they surrounded me and said, ‘What gives you the right to be here on this mothers’ board? We don’t understand it.’ I said, ‘Because I’m a mother to the ones you can’t love. The ones that you cannot be a mother to, that you throw out on the street every day. Those are my children. The ones you throw away.’ I said, ‘That’s why I’m here.’ You could hear a pin drop, nobody said nothing. They went on and accepted me and said, ‘Come on girl, sit down.’”
Each interview that Dugan and Fabbre conducted proved to be a unique experience, as Dugan told us: “I didn’t get to know each person well until we were actually meeting to make the photograph and conduct the interview.” Dugan said that they and Fabbre primarily selected “participants based on their demographic information, which included their identity, of course, as well as their geographic location.” The particular care that Dugan and Fabbre placed into finding a diverse array of TGNC individuals, across many races, ethnicities, classes, geographic locations, gender identities and expressions, sexualities, life narratives, and more, allows for a rich and comprehensive look into the histories of TGNC individuals in the United States.
While Dugan and Fabbre found many interview participants on their own through their own connections and presence in LGBTQ+ communities, the potential of the project grew as press opportunities caught people’s attention all over the United States (and abroad!). Dugan told us that after their project was featured in the New York Times in 2015, “we were contacted by people all over the United States (and internationally, although we limited the project to the US) who wanted to participate. At the time of the project’s conclusion, I had a list of hundreds of potential participants and regretted not being able to include everyone who had expressed interest. I was incredibly moved by the overwhelming response to the project and by how many people wanted to participate and share their stories.”
Bobbie, 60, Hanford, CA, 2016
“We never really considered growing old, we just considered the future. To be honest with you, I’m sixty going on seventeen. People talk about a “reset,” and by gosh, I went through it. When I first came out, I felt like I was fourteen or fifteen. I was stumbling on everything socially. I didn’t know what to do or how to react. I always thought I wasn’t going to make it past forty-five. When I was forty-four, I bought a motorcycle. When forty-six hit, well, I realized I was wrong on that one. But that’s around the time when I started realizing who I was and everything came about. I see a future now with a growing family and I don’t know what shape that will take. That’s the beauty of it, is that I don’t know how it’s going to unfold. I know where our past has been. I’m looking forward to our future.”
Dugan and Fabbre always conducted interviews before creating the corresponding portraits. They told Irvine that this was done so that they could have “some insight into what is important to each person,” which helped Dugan personalize each portrait. Most portraits were also taken in the homes of the interviewees, so that they could be captured in their own environments. Each interview would begin with the question “How do you identify today, and what were some key moments that led to that identity?” and would conclude with the question “As you look ahead, what are your hopes for the future or, alternately, fears about growing older?” These questions encapsulated the important themes in To Survive on this Shore: LGBTQ+ identities, and the more universal theme of aging.
Aging populations are found across race, class, gender, sexuality, and spiritual lines, among others. This commonality helps draw viewers to Dugan and Fabbre’s project, including elders and younger people of various identities who may not know much if anything about TGNC individuals. Equally important to the educational and awareness aspect of To Survive on this Shore, is the inspiration it provides to young TGNC community members who feel as though they have no one to look up to, no positive examples of who they can grow up to be.
Jude, 75, Yuba City, CA, 2015
“I started hormones in 1971, when I was thirty-one, and they worked pretty quickly. Within six weeks, I was shaving and my voice had dropped. I had been working as a dog groomer in the same shop for about six years. One of my customers asked, ‘Where did Judy go?’ And my employer said, ‘She went to have a sex change.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no, not sweet little Judy. She wouldn’t do anything like that.’ So my temperament to other people was this sweet, kind, gentle soul, and I think I’m still a sweet, kind, gentle soul, but it’s hard to see under the layers of what we think of as traditional masculinity.”
Interviews for To Survive on this Shore project were edited for length and clarity, but complete copies have been donated to several archives across Canada and the United States, in order to preserve the oral histories of the TGNC community. Fabbre told Irvine that these histories are data, and their conservation will allow social scientists like Fabbre to study and answer research questions regarding “the health and well-being of trans and gender nonconforming older adults.”
The public can access the interviews and corresponding portraits at the To Survive on this Shore website. Viewers taking a closer look into the site may even find Jude Patton’s full interview and portrait – The Cloud Dancers first wish recipient!