On Tuesday, May 20, 2025, at 11.30 a.m. Joseph Gallivan interviews photographer and Rutgers University professor Leah DeVun about her show Resemblance, which runs through May 31 at Blue Sky Gallery. DeVun talks by Zoom about her intimate domestic photos of her family, which includes her teenage son and his transgender father. DeVun discusses her use of medium format color film, the influence of painters such as Hockney and Caravaggio, and the political importance of transgender visibility.
From the press release: Resemblance
May 1 - 31 , 2025
Resemblance is a photo series documenting my partner, a transgender father, who — together with me — is raising a son. Right now, legislation is attacking transgender people on many fronts while limiting our ability to even talk about queer and trans experience. Meanwhile, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric invokes the old stereotype that queer and trans adults can’t be trusted around children. The images in Resemblance are intended, in part, to show a real queer and trans family affected by these politics, and to offer a counterweight to stories about anti-LGBTQ+ violence and trauma that dominate our news and social media feeds. The Trevor Project tells us that last year 73% of LGBTQ+ youth said they were experiencing anxiety, and nearly 50% considered suicide. We need photography that shows queer and trans life across the spectrum of experiences and across our life spans, reassuring our community that LGBTQ+ people have a future beyond their youth. Queer and trans kids can survive; they can grow to adulthood; they can create families and have kids of their own, if they want. These photos are a visual reminder that – while it is true that trans people suffer disproportionately in all kinds of ways -- trans life can also be full of safety and care and even calm. Beyond our movements out in the clubs and the streets, our home lives are a kind of politics, and they can be liberatory too.
Leah DeVun (American, b. 1973, she/her) is a Brooklyn-based artist and scholar who documents queer and transgender lives and histories. Publications presenting DeVun’s artwork include Artforum, BOMB, People, Hyperallergic, LA Review of Books, Out, Art Papers, Feature Shoot, Redbook, Slate, Capricious, LA Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Refinery29, as well as recent collections such as Queer Art: From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between and Making Home, the Smithsonian Design Triennial. Her work has been selected for the New York (Times) Portfolio Review, Photolucida's Critical Mass Top 50, SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), PhotoVogue Festival (Milan, with Eye Mama Project), ImageNation (Milan and Paris), and as a finalist for the 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize. Venues presenting her artwork include Baxter Street Camera Club, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Blanton Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Houston Center for Photography, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Kate Werble Gallery, Mrs. Gallery, ONE Archives Gallery and Museum at USC, Royal Photographic Society (UK), Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Tang Teaching Museum, and Tracey-Barry Gallery at NYU, among others. DeVun is a Professor of History at Rutgers University and is the author of three books and collections, including, most recently, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance.
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Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune and for Axios Portland. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available lightly used.