Changed themselves: the life of Cuban transgender beauties
New York-based photographer Mariette Pati Allen documents the lives of Cubans who have had a gender reassignment.
She has been doing the same all over the world for 30 years, but the TransCuba series is the most revolutionary and revealing. It shows the real life of the Cuban transcommunity, everything that is usually hidden from prying eyes. They watch TV, sunbathe on the beach and communicate a lot: with their families, neighbors, boyfriends, live and on the phone. The photographer seeks to show two opposite things. On the one hand, her characters are not like everyone else: they have female souls enclosed in male bodies. But still, discarding all social clichés, we can state that this is in many ways the ordinary life of ordinary people, albeit a little extravagant for the layman.
The TransCuba project came out in book form. Eighty color photographs are complemented by essays and interviews. The prologue to the book was written by the daughter of Raul Castro, the current president of Cuba. Tolerance towards transgender people is now supported there at the state level - since 2008 in Cuba, you can legally have a sex change operation.
Mariette Pati Allen: “I foresee a time when the mainstream in society will be freedom from prejudice and prejudice towards people with gender characteristics. On the contrary, they can become teachers who will show everyone else how to free themselves from the strictness of gender roles and find alternative ways of how to unite their body and soul.”
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Keywords: Cuban transsexuals