Toby at rest, 1990

“Mariette Pathy Allen has spent almost forty years photographing transgender individuals, beginning with cross-dressers whose forays outside the safety of their homes were made at constant peril of social alienation or physical violence . . . . Allen’s artistic intention has always been to make an honest chronicle of members of this paraculture, and she collaborates with each of her subjects to represent them in the ways they want to be seen.”

—Philip Gefter, Aperture Issue #229: "Future Gender"

Pigment Print
Image Size: 13 1/4 x 20 inches
Paper Size: 15 1/4 x 22 inches
Edition of 15
Signed and numbered by the artist on a label

Mariette Pathy Allen (b. 1940, Alexandria, Egypt) has been photographing the transgender community for over 30 years. Her background as a painter motivates her photographic investigations of color, space, and cultural juxtapositions. In 1978, Allen met crossdressers in her New Orleans hotel, and since she has continued her work on gender variance, both in the U.S. and abroad. One of five books published since 1989, The Gender Frontier, one of five of Allens’s books published since 1989, won Allen the 2004 Lambda Literary Award. Allen’s work is in various museum collections, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Bibliotheque National, Paris. Her life’s work is being archived by Duke University’s Rare Book and Manuscripts Library and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s Studies.