Briar Pine

PROJECT STATEMENT

“My ongoing project, Camouflaged, explores my patriarchal lineage to investigate how masculinities are formed and performed. The project draws parallels between the history of photography and the masculine culture I was raised within, both of which carry traditions rooted in control, dominance and extraction. Through this lens,the series asks how transmasculine identities navigate the pressure to either assimilate into dominant cultural structures or resist them entirely.

In making each portrait, I undergo transformations to question how I dismantle, uphold, or complicate the patriarchal ideologies embedded within American culture. In several photographs, I apply self-camoufl aging techniques borrowing from military and hunting culture, as well as natural systems, to explore what it means to be seen as a trans person in the United States. Camouflage is traditionally used to disappear into an environment. I, however, employ it to become hypervisible, confronting the viewer with the expectations and limitations placed on gender presentation.

Throughout the series, I reflect on my lived experience and relationships with the men in my family to explore my place within the familial patriarchal structure. I use personal artifacts such as my father’s hair and my own, hunting and scavenging trophies, testosterone, and family photographs to trace my relationships and history. Exclusion from the masculine rites and rituals shared between the men in my family becomes the starting point for this body of work, prompting questions about what is passed down, what is withheld, and how new forms of masculinity might take shape.” – Briar Pine