Glitter in My Wounds

Book excerpt: The result of a series of chance encounters, 'Glitter in My Wounds' embraces accident and improvisation in the face of the restrictive categories that pervade art and life. The book is shaped around a series of portraits of the transgender activist and actress Gersande Spelsberg made by the artist and educator Adam Broomberg. Spelsberg sat for Broomberg and together they made 100 photographs, shot on 5x4 negative and lit only using the sun and mirrors--the same distinctive lighting technique employed in Helmar Lerski's remarkable series "Metamorphosis Through Light". Spelsberg's story of transitioning reflects on and questions the many toxic pre-existing conditions that shape contemporary gender roles. CAConrad's book '(Soma)tic Poetry Rituals', serves as a roadmap for confronting identities that had previously felt fixed and immutable and in this collection Broomberg encountered the poem "Glitter in My Wounds", with its sparkling echoes of the portraits Broomberg and Spelsberg had made. A prismatic reflection on identity and encounter formed in the meeting of three uncompromising artists, 'Glitter in My Wounds' confronts rigid conventions with an iconoclastic combination of portraits and poetics.