The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU is thrilled to present To Survive on This Shore, a new photographic exhibition on view from February 8 through April 30, 2022. This interdisciplinary project is a collaboration between Jess T. Dugan, photographer, and Vanessa Fabbre, social worker and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, whose research focuses on the intersection of LGBTQ issues and aging.
For more than five years, Dugan and Fabbre traveled throughout the United States seeking subjects whose experiences exist within the complex intersections of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class and geographic location. They traveled from coast to coast, to big cities and small towns, documenting the life stories of this important but largely underrepresented group of older adults. The featured individuals have a wide variety of life narratives spanning the last 90 years, offering an important historical record of transgender experience and activism in the United States.
Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photographic portraiture. Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 35 museums throughout the United States. Dugan’s monographs include To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). They are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and were selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change. They are represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Ill.
Vanessa Fabbre, Ph.D., LCSW, is an Assistant Professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and a Faculty Scholar at the Institute for Public Health. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her research explores the conditions under which gender and sexual minorities age well and what this means in the context of social forces such as heteronormativity, heterosexism and transphobia. She is also interested in critical perspectives on social work practice and interpretive methodology in the social sciences. She is actively involved in the Gerontological Society of America, the American Society on Aging and the Society for Social Work and Research. Her work has been published in The Gerontologist, the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Social Work, the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, the Journal of Urban Health and the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults is an exhibition organized by Barrett Barrera Projects. The exhibition is supported in part by the Oregon Cultural Trust.
Visitor information: Open Tuesday - Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm - Thursdays from 11am to 7pm.
Website: http://www.pdx.edu/museum-of-art/
Cost: Free
Venue Type: Gallery
Event Type: Exhibition
Diversity: AAPI , BIPOC , LGBTQIA+ , Women/Femme, Other
Accessibility Options: Emotional Support Animals Allowed, Wheelchair Accessible
ALT Text: Jess T. Dugan, Caprice, 55, Chicago, IL, 2015, pigment print, 32 x 40 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Barrett Barrera Projects.