Mariette Pathy Allen is an American photographer, artist, and pioneering advocate for transgender visibility, who has dedicated much of her career to documenting transgender, genderfluid, cross-dressing, and gender-nonconforming people and their communities. Beginning in 1978, she started photographing people whose experiences of gender challenged conventional social expectations, creating an extensive visual record of lives that had long remained underrepresented in mainstream photography and public discourse. Through her sensitive portraits and personal encounters, Allen seeks to capture not only the diversity of gender expression but also the humanity, relationships, aspirations, and everyday experiences of the people she photographs. She is the author of several influential photographic books, including Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them (1989), which explores the lives of cross-dressers and their partners and families; The Gender Frontier (2004), a landmark collection documenting transgender people during a period of growing visibility and social change; and TransCuba (2014), which presents the experiences of transgender people in Cuba, offering insight into their personal lives, communities, and the social circumstances in which they live. The Gender Frontier received the Lambda Literary Award in the Transgender/Genderqueer category, recognizing its contribution to the representation of transgender lives and experiences.
Allen's photography has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications, museums, and cultural institutions. Her work has helped preserve an important visual history of transgender communities, documenting people at different stages of their lives and transitions while challenging simplistic portrayals of gender identity. Rather than treating her subjects as curiosities, she approaches them as individuals with their own voices, histories, relationships, and ambitions. Her photographs also explore the connections between gender identity, family, intimacy, community, and the search for acceptance. Through decades of photography, interviews, exhibitions, and advocacy, Mariette Pathy Allen has made a significant contribution to transgender visibility and historical documentation. Her work offers an intimate perspective on the changing experiences of gender-diverse people across different cultures and generations, creating a valuable archive for future generations and helping audiences better understand the richness and complexity of human gender expression.
Monika: Mariette, welcome! I am delighted that you accepted my invitation.
Mariette: Hello Monika, thanks for having me.
Monika: Painting and photography seem to have been part of your life from early on. Were your parents supportive of those interests?
Mariette: Visual art was my strong suit from the beginning. When I went to school, I would disappear into the art studio as often as possible, sometimes missing math class! My family was in favor of my painting, and I had an aunt, an artist, who was very important to me.
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| Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen. |
Monika: Could you take me back to the very first photograph you ever took. Do you remember it?
Mariette: I remember taking some photographs in Venice with my father. I was using a simple camera. My father and I were surprised by how good they were!
Monika: Thousands of photographs must take some organizing. How do you categorize and store them, and is it difficult to remember the names and background details?
Mariette: It is! I wish I had been much more thorough. Now I often just pick the decade when the work was taken. On the other hand, my prints, negatives, and slides are sorted, edited, and filed.
Monika: Black and white or color: which do you find yourself reaching for more often?
Mariette: Very often in the past, I carried two cameras, one for color slides and one for black and white negatives, then selected whichever worked best. When I switched to digital photography, I started working just in color.
Monika: The debate over whether photography counts as art has gone on for generations. Where do you stand?
Mariette: That’s an ancient question that has been answered a long time ago! It depends on the purpose of the photograph. If the photograph is made for commercial purposes, that’s one thing. If it expresses a personal vision, it is more likely to be considered “art”, even if it’s not good!
Monika: Your first encounter with our community reportedly happened in 1978, in a hotel during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Is that true?
Mariette: Yes, that’s true. I took my first photograph when the crossdressers stood in a line around the hotel swimming pool.
Monika: Many trans women prefer to stay in the closet, but you convinced a number of them to step in front of your camera. How did you break the ice?
Mariette: There is so much to say about this, but to make it really brief, I was one of the first people to photograph gender-diverse people in the daylight of everyday life, as relatable human beings rather than freaks.
Monika: Who was ready to be photographed at that point, and what did they hope to achieve?
Mariette: People who were beginning to be political activists wanted to be photographed and included in “Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them” because they wanted to change the way they were seen by society. When the book came out, they felt comfortable showing it to their parents, wives, and even strangers. They finally had a book that showed them in a positive way.
Monika: You mention parents and wives, and several of your photographs show gender-variant people with their spouses and children in everyday situations. Was that deliberate?
Mariette: My goal was to present crossdressers as relatable people, so showing them with their partners, family members, and friends was important.
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| Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen. Kathy, What Sex Am I? (1984) |
Mariette: I had a number of criteria: good photographs, stories that presented a range of people and their lives so that outsiders couldn’t assume gender-expansive people were all the same, and, finally, whether I had a good rapport with them.
Monika: In 1984, Lee Grant invited you to be the photographer for What Sex Am I?, a documentary about transgender people in different parts of mid-1980s America. Had you worked with her before, and how did the two of you connect?
Mariette: I lived in the same building as Lee Grant in the ‘80s and met her there. I admired her films. I was thrilled to be her still photographer and to meet so many wonderful people. The researchers she worked with did a great job, and sometimes I could add my two cents. I worked with Lee on another film later on, “Down and Out in America”, which was about poverty in the US.
Monika: Lee’s portrayal of our community is astonishing, so educated and sympathetic, and much closer to 21st-century sentiment than to that of the 1980s…
Mariette: Lee is a good person who always stands up against injustice.
Monika: Kathy and Randi, my favorite characters in the film, appear right at the beginning. Kathy is about to undergo bottom surgery, while Randi had hers a couple of months earlier, and I love their kitchen chat with Kathy’s mother about whether Kathy is ready for the operation. Did you know both women well?
Mariette: No, I didn’t, although they were very likable, and I got some good photographs of them. I made friends with Diahanna and we remain friends to this day. (Diahanna is Afro-American. She tries on hats with a friend named Ken/Kathy.)
Monika: In my interview with Connie Fleming about the New York drag scene of the 1980s, she described how drag artists were looked down upon by almost everyone, seen as the lowest of the low, pejorative, a nuisance to some and a hindrance to the LGBTQ+ community being taken seriously by others. Did that make photographing them a challenge for you?
Mariette: It was a challenge for me only when I had to explain to people outside the community that there are many differences between transgender and drag. Nowadays the differences are blended and people can decide how they want to identify. At the Gay Pride Parade in NYC in 1995, there was a major fight over where the drag artists should walk, whether they should walk with the trans or the gay contingents. Both groups wanted them!
Monika: What was it like spending time with the performers themselves?
Mariette: As far as my experiences with performers are concerned, I had a lot of fun! We could play together, act out roles, and wander around town. One of my best friends was “Lola Lowrent” who partnered with her friend “Dena Dynel.” They were very witty and smart. They would wander into clubs and entertain people just being their alter egos. They weren’t looking for cash, just making people laugh.
Monika: Were there any NYC nightclubs you favored for photographing performers?
Mariette: Not really. There was one club, “The Red Parrot,” where I went early on. They were very welcoming, even cozy. Generally, I prefer to be backstage. I enjoy the complications and coming together of the performers. It is often surreal, with all kinds of unusual juxtapositions.
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| Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen. International Chrysis, a trans performer, getting ready backstage for a performance at a nightclub. |
Monika: Do those nightclubs still exist, and do you ever go back?
Mariette: No, sadly. Life here is not jubilant and exciting now. You might have heard that there are dozens of bills being passed all over the country against transgender people.
Monika: The nightclubs also put you in the same room as well-known artists, International Chrysis among them. I watched a documentary about her, and she struck me as a beautiful woman and a successful artist who carried a deep, innate sadness. Did you know her well?
Mariette: Unfortunately I didn’t know her at all. I was lucky to have taken a few different photos of her. I would love to see the film. What is its name?
Monika: The documentary is titled “Split: Portrait of a Drag Queen”, a 1993 American film by directors Ellen Fisher Turk and Andrew Weeks. The next decade witnessed a profound social change that is also captured in your photos included in “The Gender Frontier” (2004). We are no longer shy, intimidated, living in a hidden world treated as social outcasts. We want to be visible and demand our rights. Is this how you chose the photos for the book?
Mariette: I got very involved in political activism for trans rights. I traveled all over the country with groups of activists, both transmen and transwomen. We made people aware of all sorts of injustices against gender-expansive people, including the many murders. It was an exciting time because we could see changes taking place. It was a big deal when President Obama used the word “transgender” in a speech.
Monika: Your photographs from that period feel different too, more intense and ‘direct’. Family scenes give way to surgeries, nudity, the emergence of young people, and numerous political events.
Mariette: I believe that my early work is very political. It took a lot of courage for people to participate in radio and television programs, and to be photographed. It was a much riskier time to “out” oneself.
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| Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen. Carol, wearing her mother’s dress, CT, ‘80s. |
Monika: What changed in the community once the 1990s arrived?
Mariette: Around the ‘90s and onward, some people within LGBTI circles started to come together to work for common causes. There were plenty of disagreements but also forward movement. Queer and genderfluid young people started to emerge and academics wrote books. As I mentioned, there were endless rallies, marches, demonstrations, leafleting, and trips to some relatively remote places.
Monika: Many of us are said to be prisoners of the passing or non-passing syndrome, since the need to pass as a woman and the fear of being clocked are often present in everyday life. When you took photographs, nudes included, did you want to accentuate gender fluidity or to focus on the transition from male to female?
Mariette: There are plenty of surgeries for female-to-males as well as male-to-female. It is much easier to live one’s life when one blends in, but there are also people who want to blend their gender or sexuality without falling into the binary, or ‘either/or’. The photographs of nudes that I’ve taken usually show the beauty of the blended body, or show transformation as in the two photographs of Tony, the sheriff.
Monika: In 1996, you worked with Rosa von Praunheim on The Transexual Menace, a documentary about the transgender rights activist organization founded in New York City in 1993 by transgender activists including Riki Wilchins and Denise Norris, among others. How did you get invited to the project?
Mariette: It was all part of my life as an activist in this community. Riki Wilchins is a friend of mine.
Monika: How did your friendship with Riki begin?
Mariette: I met her when she lived in NYC and was involved with the LGBT Community Center. I participated in some discussion groups that she organized. At first, she was a little suspicious of me because I wanted to photograph her too soon after we met. At this point, I could say I have a large collection of photographs of her, taken during political events, as well as her wedding to Gina Reiss.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Mariette Pathy Allen.
Mariette Pathy Allen's website: mariettepathyallen.com
© 2023 - Monika Kowalska
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