Lauren Silberman

Images of drag performers, photographed mid-transformation inhabit an ambiguous and undefined place. My subjects are beyond female/male impersonation and their transformation is beyond gender; they become a more pure and more essential version of themselves. This place of transformation is as empowering as it is subversive through the infinite possibilities of the “self” that it creates; as Madame Vivien V boldly exclaimed during our shoot “when I’m in drag, nobody can touch me.” By taking drag artists out of the nightclubs, I attempted to capture them within their own moments of both vulnerability and empowerment.