As a photographer, my work is rooted in the investigation of layered identity—both in its visual expression and in the deeper, often invisible, emotional and cultural dimensions that shape it. In my series Queen, this exploration becomes especially pronounced through the lens of drag performance, where transformation is not only aesthetic but also deeply symbolic.

The project unfolds through portraits taken before, during, and after the backstage transformation process. This sequencing reveals a powerful duality: the tension between vulnerability and performance, authenticity and artifice. While this dichotomy exists within all of us, it becomes heightened in drag, where the act of self-creation is both a personal ritual and a political statement.

Makeup, padding, lingerie, and exaggerated femininity serve as literal and symbolic layers—tools of empowerment and self-expression, but also markers of societal expectation and resistance. These physical elements mirror internal complexities: the negotiations of identity, acceptance, and survival in a culture that often demands conformity. In the context of a socially conservative Southern environment, these images also speak to the courage required simply to exist outside normative frameworks.

Queen invites viewers to examine the assumptions we project onto others—and the ways we categorize to simplify, to control, to feel safe. But identity defies simplicity. Beneath every constructed image lies something irreducibly human: raw, multifaceted, and emotionally resonant. This series is ultimately a study in the complexity of being—layered, painful, beautiful, and deeply human.