ABOUT TRANSCENDING LOVE
Transcending Love is a documentary project focused on opening hearts and minds to the extraordinary couples in the transgender and gender non-binary community through photographs, video and text.
Visibility matters. This project provides a platform of validation for the transgender community.
Since 2017, B. Proud has made it her mission to travel the country documenting couples and families with environmental portraiture and video interviews, providing a resource for the voices of a community that has long been ignored, swept under the rug, thrown under the bus, misunderstood and disrespected by society as a whole. With a waiting list of over 100 couples across the country, B. Proud hopes to portray the greatest amount of geographic, ethnic, socio-economic and age diversity in hopes of showing our country that transgender couples are our neighbors. Everywhere. From the large metropolitan cities on both coasts to the rural towns of the Midwest, gender fluid and gender-nonconforming couples are part of the fabric of our society.
Transcending Love includes an environmental portrait of each couple in order to show their essence and beauty in their full humanity. The formality of the portrait, as opposed to a candid photograph, is aimed at honoring the subjects in a more stately, heroic way. In many cases, the couple visibly presents as heterosexual or even homosexual, terms actually reserved for sexuality. This project is about the validity and fluidity of gender expression. It will only be through reading the accompanying text that the viewer will truly understand the depth and complexity of the relationship and come to realize that this is an extraordinary couple with a deep commitment to each other. The location for each portrait, chosen by the couple in discussion with the artist, is significant and provides the viewer with another level of understanding into the relationship. The photographs invite the viewer to accept the subjects as "ordinary" people with hopes and dreams and a deep abiding love. The portraits offer an invitation to accept what's beneath the surface, not in terms of anatomy, but rather what lies in the hearts and souls of the subjects.
The couples photographed show an array of relationships and an assortment of combinations, all with the common thread of people being their true selves and falling in love. Whether it's two transgender men, two transgender women, a formerly heterosexual couple where either the wife or husband has transitioned, a formerly lesbian couple, where one has transitioned, or a gay man and a trans man, all will be portrayed with the respect they deserve as human beings.
B. Proud’s previous project, First Comes Love: Portraits of Enduring LGBTQ Relationships, portrayed couples in long-term relationships and their love and determination to be together across decades. The portraits in that project were presented in black & white to strip away all of the rainbow flag connotations and ask the viewer to look deeper. Transcending Love is presented in full color because the transgender community is anything but black and white. There are many hues and configurations in these relationships, the portraits ask our society to embrace the full spectrum of the manifestations of their love. Is a lesbian who becomes a trans man and is in a relationship with a cis gendered woman now straight? Does it matter? Why do labels need to define one of the deepest emotions on the planet? Why does love even need to be explained? It just is.