"The first time Bex McCharen tried to photograph their extended biological family in the mountains of Virginia, something felt off. The camera created a distance rather than a connection; the intimacy wasn't there. But in Miami, waist-deep in the Atlantic Ocean with their queer and trans friends, the opposite happens: Images arrive with ease. Bodies drift toward the lens without self-consciousness. Water softens everything."
"The photos that emerge from these gatherings, depicting friends floating and laughing, form the raw material for Queer Atlantics, their newest body of work. On February 20, McCharen will host an evening at Green Space Miami as part of Women Photographers International Archive's monthly Image Readings series, a community gathering where image-makers share and discuss works in progress."
""The ocean is like church for us," McCharen said. "It's where we go to feel accepted, held, and whole.""
Bex McCharen photographs queer and trans friends waist-deep in Miami’s Atlantic, creating images in which bodies float, laugh, and move toward the lens without self-consciousness. Water functions as a communal space that softens, holds, and fosters intimacy, acceptance, and belonging. Those photographs serve as raw material for Queer Atlantics, a series of ocean-soaked photographs and quilts that treat Miami’s waters as sites of refuge and memory. McCharen shifted from founding the body-inclusive label Chromat toward textile, cyanotype, and photographic practices, debuting the works publicly and organizing community image-sharing events in Miami.
Read at Hyperallergic
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