The North American LCD

Screens serve as an alternative to mirrors for self-reflection—they present an alluring yet dissociative vision. A way of mediating how I, and other trans people, perceive our own bodies in the world. Crying with screens, loving through screens. Most days, screens are my primary way of interfacing with the world. I obsess to a degree that the screen becomes more real than my own body, a manifestation of gender dysphoria. By physically interacting with screens, I am absorbed in my own image. Can I escape the screen and truly exist in this land? I use LCDs to construct my own landscape and create a space for my body, as an act of resistance against colonial representations. I combine landscape and portraiture to create new perspectives on the way my identity is represented. To explore and to draw attention to the imposition of the frame as part of the colonial construction of landscape. Landscape photography was and is used as an imperial tool to pillage the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples. Images of a depopulated land are an act of deception meant to hide human history. Representations of fake and insubstantial reconciliation make it possible to live happily amidst beautiful scenery on the site of a genocide. Genocide and pollution will not be washed away with the power of language. Resisting colonization must not be reduced an act of reinforcing the existing power structures.