Love Pictures

My work explores the complexities of personhood, relationships, desire, love, and family.... It is informed by my identity as a queer, nonbinary person and is motivated by an existential need to understand myself and connect with others. Central themes are living authentically and the immense power of seeing—and being seen by—others.

— Jess T. Dugan

Love Pictures, a collaboration between photographer Jess T. Dugan and writer Charlotte Cotton, is centered around a series of conversations between the two focusing on core themes that inform Dugan’s practice, including gender and identity, family and politics, writing and language, the book as object, and the dynamics of the exhibition space.

These initial dialogues then prompted subsequent conversations with others in Dugan’s and Cotton’s respective communities: friends, colleagues, mentors, and subjects of Dugan’s work—including Dawoud Bey, Kelli Connell, and Dorothy Moss, among others. Transcriptions of these intimate and in-depth exchanges are woven with the first comprehensive survey of Dugan’s work in book form.

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