Photographer Soraya Zaman’s American Boys Series Tells a New Story About Masculinity

It is, simply put, a terrifying time to be trans in America, with Republicans regularly passing harmful legislation in more than a dozen states including Texas, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. That said, we’re also lucky to be living in an era of unbridled trans and nonbinary creativity, with artists and writers like Krys Malcolm Belc, Torrey Peters, and Tourmaline complicating our understanding of what gender is and how it shapes our lives and identities.

Photographer Soraya Zaman has dedicated the last few years of their work to capturing trans life—and the experiences of transmasculine individuals specifically—in arresting portraits, which were compiled into the 2019 book American Boys and are currently the subject of a solo exhibition in Melbourne. Vogue recently spoke to Zaman about their exhibition, their book of photography, their casting process, and how they go about creating a safe and inclusive space for the individuals they photograph.

Vogue: How did this multimedia project come to be?

Soraya Zaman: I started the project back in 2016, and it had a very humble beginning of kind of wanting to explore transmasculine identity and what that looks like. Taking an intense interest in this subject coincided with me exploring my own gender identity in terms of being nonbinary, and I did that through exploring other people’s relationships with their gender identity across the transmasculine spectrum. The more people I met and photographed, the more I realized that these narratives really needed to be shared. Especially back in 2016 and especially with transmasculine representation in media...I just didn’t see much of it. It goes back to that old adage of seeing yourself reflected in the world, especially as a queer person. When you’re growing up, you don’t see a lot of queer people represented in media or TV or advertising, except for during Pride month, when everyone jumps on the rainbow-capitalism thing. But there’s never this very real, honest portrayal of what trans lives look like.