A Boy’s Dream

Artist Statement

In this project, my goal is to capture the essence of childhood as well as creating a mirror of reality. My relationship with legos goes back to when I was in elementary school. In third grade, I got my first legos, an Indiana Jones set. Even though my brother is younger than me, he had legos before me. In my family, legos were considered a boys’ toy and not a girls’ toy, but I didn’t like playing with girls’ toys, I liked boys’ toys. It was a struggle to get my first lego set.

In looking backwards, I realized the struggle with getting a set of legos was deeper and more personal than just a toy. It represented my inner struggle with gender identity. I was born female, but I am a transgender male. Throughout my transition, photography has helped me explore my feelings. after all the years of being denied legos, and the freedom to play with boys toys this project is healing.

In my beginning photography class, I researched photographer André Kertész, who uses every-day objects in staged photos. His work inspired me to use my legos, which I had recently put in a box to donate. Instead, I took them out and set them up and took photos of them. I decided I had found what I was meant to do with photography and with the legos I fell in love with as a kid. I like working with my hands and being able to control what I take pictures of, it has become my new and different way of looking at toys.

A common character in my photos is lego Miles. Lego Miles gets to be whatever he wants to be like and astronaut, loving father, actually have facial hair, just another world that exist that whatever I want can become the reality for my lego guy.

When setting up for a scene I tend to want to be outside or look for what would be a good background. For these photos that all have to deal with the dark room. I thought it would be funny for little lego guys explore the real-world things like film development tanks and put actual film on it.