Indian photographer Jitendra Jerry captures bold and beautiful portraits of India’s trans and non-binary youth. Their ongoing work, titled Who Am I?! is an exploration of the expression and authenticity of underrepresented queer youth in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata.
Jerry doesn’t stop at showcasing the trans and non-binary people of big cities. They travel to small towns like Yellapur in Karnataka, where they photograph queer youth from the Siddi community.
The Siddi community is an Afro-descendant tribe in rural India, who were thought to have arrived in India as slaves between the 15th and 17th centuries. They are often the subject of discrimination and social isolation. Jerry’s work puts the overlooked in the foreground. The images are soft and sensitive, yet full of mettle and guts.
These gentle portraits highlight the reality of queer, trans, and non-binary identities among youth in India, which are ”often filtered through a Western gaze that flattens our experiences or overlooks the cultural, political, and social contexts we live in”, says Jerry in a recent interview with Dazed.
Jitendra often connects with their subjects through dating apps like Grindr. The resulting images are tender, shining a light on a human desire for connection and the peace that comes with living as one’s true self.
The portraits are intimate without being sexual, vulnerable without being weak. They photograph young queer and trans people in places they wish to be photographed, such as their personal spaces or somewhere they hold close. The work has an ethereal but real, home-movie-like quality to it.
The photographer recently shot The IT Ball, “a drag ballroom event that has become one of the most powerful safe spaces for queer expression in India.” Jitendra’s work is not only aesthetically pleasing but also important in an archival sense.
You can stay up to date with Jitendra’s photography by following their Instagram page.
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