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Gallery Exhibitions  Narratives / Blogs |
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Stacey Halper | Los Angeles, California gen-der: the fact of being a male or female human being, especially as it affects a person's self-image, social relationships, etc. - Webster's New World Dictionary, 2002 Edition Drag King Project is a series of images that revolve around a group of performers during the preparatory stages of their performance. Stacey Halper draws on her observations as a wedding photographer that provided her with a prime example of gender performance of heightened femininity exaggerated through clothes and ceremony. In her own work, she prefers the quiet, introspective moments, prior to the performance that draw out unexpected and unfamiliar but perhaps not unwelcome emotions triggered by gender play. Performing a gender different from your own blurs the lines between them. The clothes, the make-up, the fake mustaches bestow a level of freedom unattainable in the attire of one's own gender that we are expected to perform. Drag questions the traditional gender as manifested through clothes, make-up and behavior. In the full length mirror image, a male performer prepares for his role as a woman: he adds padding to his hips and make-up to his face. He has been captured before he goes on stage, at a moment when he is ready to cross the gender line: there is a bit if tenderness mixed in with the realities of a messy and cramped dressing area. For a moment we are voyeurs, allowed into a realm usually not open to the audience, and just as in the image where a performer adds facial hair, we are privy to the process of crossing over without being sure when it began or when it will be complete. What determines gender? Does a dress, trousers or make-up account for it? The performers in Halper's images were captured at a quiet moment, before 'the vibrant energy of the performance.’ During the preparations, we have a chance to observe them at a moment when a relocation of gender, albeit for a short period, takes place. Gender and identity lines are becoming blurred without the extra effort of make-up and clothes, and these precious moments say more than any performance ever could. - by Marina Freeman
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