Day 4: Hari Nef

fashion and the trans aesthetic
by harinef | part iv: current editorial

tawan kim (trfkrm)
ethan james green
april 2015

a friend of mine recently quipped that ethanjamesgreen is “like, the nan goldin of our generation.” i shared her prognosis with ethan, who balked. i’m only so familiar with the work of goldin, but i doubt the comparison holds. if both photographers have shot the downtown kids, they’ve done so at incomparable times in incomparable ways. ethan’s practice is markedly contemporary not because of where he finds beauty, but how.

ethan is one of my best friends, so i know how he works. as is common in fashion, he scours tumblr and instagram for inspiration. but here’s the twist: he sends you an email, meets you at the park, and shoots you. that’s it.

ethan’s process shines within an industry prone to seeking, copying, pasting their muses, pinning them to moodboards, casting agency models who look like them. fashion bores ethan, a semi-retired model. so does “beauty” (at its most redundant). he shoots the kids everyone knows, but nobody shoots (or pays). when we first met, i was two months on hormones with zero photos in my portfolio. a year later, he shot me for a solo collections editorial on style.com.

ethan is brave: brave enough to insist on beauty–trans or otherwise–that legions of powerful cowards have long neglected to take on its own terms.

fashion and the trans aesthetic
by harinef | part iv: current editorial

juliana huxtable
“last exit to brooklyn” by mario sorrenti
styled by mel ottenberg
purple fall fall 2013

i love purple. good old-fashioned “downtown cool” is its end, but its means change with the times. if mario sorrenti’s “last exit to brooklyn” romanticizes some “cool/gritty” vision of pre-giuliani new york, it has no choice but to embody this nostalgia through a cast of present-day new yorkers who will never know that mythical city–and probably never care.

i also love julianahuxtable. she’s one of my favorite artists, and a pillar of the trans community. her demeanor in this image confronts ottenberg’s retro-kink styling, sorrenti’s black & white. she forces her representation into the present, staring down nostalgia that may or may not serve her in the here-and-now. i’ve talked to juliana about fashion: participating in fashion, embodying fashion for others. i’ve learned from her ambivalence–from her refusal to participate in what doesn’t serve, respect, or fortify her.

sorrenti and ottenberg are up to something tricky: something which transcends nostalgia through embodying it. their work invokes history in order to break with it. indeed: “last exit to brooklyn” is no gesamtkunstwerk, but a keen pastiche of identities in the new york context…whatever that means.