Bex Day

0:04[Applause]

0:15so my name is sex day I'm a 26 Road self to fashion and documentary photographer from London my work focuses on identity diversity freedom of choice and gender equality I'm interested in challenging rigid beauty ideals and stereotypes within my work I essentially want to take people out of boxes constructed by society which tends to enhance narrow mindedness I'm interested in the human condition.

0:53And illustrating somewhat unexpected point of view psychology is predominant within my work I want to investigate a deeper understanding of the human condition I'd like to tell you a story about when I was volunteering in psychiatric wards in Sri Lanka last year mental health in Sri Lanka is extremely stigmatized if you have diabetes then you're celebrated whereas any mention of a mental health condition you're shunned from the family they have a real shortage of psychologists out there which is why I wanted to do volunteering unfortunately sexual assault is also a really big issue there and a lot of girls on the volunteering were actually assaulted including one of my friends who went away with me on the weekend and then on the way back we were going back to our homestay and she was assaulted on the train so we ended up in this farming village called Portobello and as an homage to her and what happened I started to conduct a project there.

2:10So I was spending a lot of time with the farmers there and meeting people. And we couldn't speak the same language but through nonverbal communication we sort of made it work. And it's through pushing these boundaries that I I guess make myself a better photographer because I'm constantly learning and enhancing my work.

2:39This is one of the pictures there so being in Sri Lanka opened my eyes to the importance of Buddhism within my work it's a constant inspiration for me in terms of non judgment and also practicing no expectation yeah I'm keen to basically deconstruct this within my work because it always intrigues me how people have a certain image in their mind of how someone should be or what they should be like so yeah I'm trying to consistently deconstruct that with him my personal and my professional life my background is in journalism and this has helped me to develop the documentarian approach within my work and focus on language as an inspiration which I'll talk about in a bit I began shooting alongside the period when I was photo editor at pilot magazine editing other people's work was also helpful but also it laid the foundation for my work as a photographer as pilot is an all analog publication with no beauty retouching Photography allows me to explore the unknown and constantly push myself out of my comfort zone which is one of the reasons Han came about so hen is about the older transgender and non-binary communities in the UK everyone's over 40 years old and it came about as a reaction to the lack of older people featured in the media there were always youth focused transgender stories and it bothered me because it was clear that all these people had so much to say and they could share their stories with the younger generation.

4:40And inspire them so hen is Swedish for the gender-neutral personal pronoun which is unfortunately something we don't have in the English language but the closest equivalent is there which is the pronoun non-binary individuals tend to use so alongside reading feminist literature I became interested in binary and phallic eccentric language for those of you who don't know fallig eccentric language is male-dominated language so how we say for example mankind instead of humankind so through this it sparked an interest in the transgender communities and that's how Han began so growing up I was never encouraged to play with Barbies or to like the color pink and looking back.

5:37Now I think this is a really healthy approach to bringing up children because there's nothing worse than enforcing binaries of what male and female should be and I think it's just being outdated now.

5:50So yeah when finding people for Han I began on Craigslist and my first reply was from John who I met in Walthamstow and we hung out a few times and she enlightened me about another web site because the only responses I was getting were people asking me for my dirty knickers so she allowed me and the project to progress and at the beginning it was difficult because you're just a voice on the internet and it's hard to gain the trust and these communities so through persistence and constant posting it began to grow and through friends of friends and word-of-mouth I was able to shoot more and more people for Han so yeah those 30 different subjects photographed over three years.

6:55So yeah I would say when I began the project I was extremely naive I didn't know how to balance putting myself before my subjects and the intensities of their needs I was trying to be a therapist when I'm not trained to do so and I had to take a lot breaks because yeah I actually had an identity crisis during it which I now acknowledge is OCD so I would try to meet each person for coffee beforehand and talk about the aims of the project but obviously sometimes that wasn't possible as a lot of people lived quite far out like whales for example and yeah it's all self-funded so you know how that goes so yeah looking back.

7:46Now I probably push myself a bit too far for instance if I couldn't meet them then sometimes I would just go and stay the weekend at their houses without knowing them.

8:02But it was always fine in the end and the trust was always reciprocated so yeah it was really eye-opening to hear about the difficulties they face because it's often censored in the media for example one of my subjects based in London she told me she used to dream when she was five years old about having a sex change but she couldn't tell anyone and there was no option to see a doctor for gender reassignment surgery either Cindy who's pictured here yeah when we were shooting she had to run inside because she's not out to her neighbours or her family and she didn't want them to see her.

8:52So yeah she only dresses part-time one person told me she used to consistently drop acid in her youth to try and escape the thoughts of being transgender but she said that when she did trip she would just see her itself over and over as a man and then a women and then a man and a women a couple of months ago she had gender reassignment surgery at the age of 65 and luckily has a really strong support network around her particularly her son sadly another of my models was attacked on the street the attacker demanded to know which gender she belonged to and in the process tucked down her skirt and touched her genitalia so for hen I wanted it to enhance social change and basically open up a platform of awareness as this behavior is usually down to ignorant if people are educated then hopefully less this antisocial behavior will happen so hen was exhibited at the Herrick gallery in London in April to coincide with trance day of visibility 2019 alongside the images I asked each person to write their own bio to give it a more personal feel yeah in terms of press and general responses I was really thrilled like I received a lot of emails from older trans people saying that they felt way less isolated and that was a really empowering project it was also featured on channel 4 news and BBC Breakfast so we also partnered with Stonewall housing who hosted three workshops throughout the week which were about trans wellness and also intergenerational support so bringing the younger and all the transgender individuals together alongside the series I also made a short documentary co-directed with Luke Sullivan to give each person more of a voice but to also look past the fact that they are transgender and actually focusing on them as people.

11:25So I want to show you the trailer and that's all from me thank you [Applause]

11:52Android would close and walked with golden and see the talk of night and light and the half-light my would spread the clothes under your feet ♪

12:49I've spread my dreams under your feet tread softly because you tread my dreams ♪

13:52and you can watch the whole film on my website that's my website [Applause]