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It’s one thing to be presenting your first-ever photography exhibit to the public, but it is something else entirely for that exhibit to a personal expression of gender and body.
This is precisely the challenge that Leaf Pankratz has taken on with their debut collection of work Before Photos, which is on display right now on the members’ wall at the Platform Centre for Photographic & Digital Arts in Artspace Inc. on Arthur Street. A dancer, circus performer and performance artist, Pankratz’s first work in stillness documents their body before undergoing gender-affirming top surgery.
“It’s a little bit unreal,” says Pankratz of people interacting with their art when they are not actively performing. “People can just go see it and I’m not there to see them seeing it.”
Listen to Leaf Pankratz on Morning Light here:
Indeed, Pankratz does not think this kind of project would even have happened were it not for the fact that a major medical procedure forced them to slow down from the usual high-energy that they put into their physical performances. “I think there’s an element of the stillness that’s peaceful in a way, but it’s also very new to me,” they explain.
As welcome as that stillness was, Pankratz still felt motivation to complete the project ahead of the hard deadline of surgery day. The exhibit shows several poses and captured moments that celebrate their bodily autonomy, even if that body has undergone significant changes since the pictures were taken. Pankratz notes the energy of those shots is the perfect confluence of their natural energy combined with the new stillness they’ve come to appreciate.
Another point of tension in the exhibit for Pankratz is the celebration of their gender expression existing in a dialectic with the vulnerable nature of having their topless photos on display, even after they’ve had top surgery. “There is for sure an element of... I mean, I think that’s that mom voice in my head of like, ‘They’re out! They’re out!’” they say. “I mean, it’s not accurate to say you can’t tie that to my body now, but it isn’t my body now.”
Pankratz hopes that Before Photos can serve as a reminder for all people, transgender or cisgender, that gender expression (what they call “gender-wonderfulness”) can exist in whatever context people want, well outside tightly controlled parameters foisted upon them by social expectations. “I really hope that there can be some of that for any of my fellow gender-wonderful people out there,” they say.
Before Photos is on display at the Platform Centre for Photographic & Digital Arts until June 24. For more information and for gallery hours, visit the Platform Centre’s website.