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.

How did you cast your subjects?

I found everyone through social media, mostly through Instagram. Most of them were already open to being raw and vulnerable and sharing their stories online in a public space, so that’s what I look for, because obviously I didn’t want to invade people’s privacy or expose people in a way that they weren’t ready for. That’s the beauty of Instagram, really; you can find people and really dive in deep through their posts and stories.

How do you create a safe and respectful on-set environment for subjects who might be at various stages of their gender journey?

With this particular project, I went and met everybody; the goal was to be invited into their homes and to make sure they felt comfortable with that. Before I even took my camera out, I would sit with them and just talk and say, “Tell me about you. How did you get to where you are now? What was your childhood like?” I would record all those conversations on my iPhone, and because a lot of what people were sharing was about being gender expansive while growing up, there were a lot of things that we could relate on. That really kind of formulated a bond and a trust. I wasn’t some outsider dictating the narrative; it was part of my narrative too. It was really collaborative; I would let them pick places where they wanted to be photographed, and we would drive around and go to all those places. It was just like two people hanging out, talking, and taking pictures, and I feel like that’s the kind of intimacy you see in the photos.

Is there anything in particular that you hope people take away from these photos?

I wanted to call out and challenge the notion that masculinity belongs exclusively to cis men. I always think about the language of the boy-girl [binary]. That’s just language, and we are more than language. Gender is larger than that.

Zaman’s photo installation “Reconstruct (the) Normative” is on view at Melbourne’s Fed Square.