and

Ohan Breiding

The photographic series and: is a collaboration between Ohan Breiding (formerly known as  Johanna Breiding) and Shoghig Halajian. 2021 has been labeled as a record year for anti-transgender legislation, with 33 states introducing more than 100 bills aimed at obstructing the rights of transgender people across the country. These images respond to this context by highlighting the poetics of gender-affirming care. They were made during a period of rest and recovery following top surgery in San Francisco.

Over the span of several weeks, Ohan and Shoghig practiced a new form of attentiveness and intimacy, following the subtle changes of the body’s scars, folds, skin, while measuring appetite, assessing mood, and gauging stamina.

The series reflects on the body as an always-changing landscape, while honoring the patient commitment necessary to hold each other up. Closely cropped to create an intimate and confined space within the frame, the photographs explore texture and more haptic forms of image-making as a way to emphasize proximity and care-based relations. The triptych and: proposes a queer aesthetics that exceeds identifying distinctions and is instead guided by a broad range of affective registers, touching surfaces such as concrete, skin, and paper in order to go deeper inside and feel photography.

This triptych reflects on the patient commitment necessary to hold each other up as lovers, friends, and members of shifting communities, and invites us to reimagine care as a messy and exploratory practice of mutual dependence and generosity. The double-incision, the cracking ground, a page of self-impressions, these images ask: Can an understanding of our shared and divergent vulnerabilities open up new lifelines of desire and resistance?