Right now, the walls of Vermillion are covered with photographs of bodies. Fat bodies and thin bodies. Brown bodies and white bodies. Bodies with tattoos and bodies with scars. Gender nonconforming bodies. Each one revealing a private, interior world of vulnerability and emotion typically reserved for our most intimate moments.
The bodies are part of Queer Feelings, an ongoing exploration by photographer Adrien Leavitt of queerness and the intimate, complex relationship that we have with our bodies. “As a trans person and a queer person, I often feel like I don’t see representations of myself in media or art,” Leavitt tells me. “When I finally found representations of queer and trans people that I could relate to—that looked like me or like my community—I felt tremendously moved. With that in mind, I started exploring self-portraiture as a way of reflecting on myself and my own identity, particularly as it relates to gender.”