Documenting the Kothi (transsexual) community in Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu), India.
In March 2013 I traveled to o Devanapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India to photograph a celebration of the Mayanakollai festival. The festival, to celebrate the deity Angalamman, and was put on by a group of Kothis - male born people who take on the female sex role with men, and who often dress as women.
Working in India, where I lived for almost three years, I was always struggling to capture the extraordinary visual kaleidoscope of India without falling back on cliché or kitsch. On that score this project posed a particularly interesting problem. It was an exotic event - a colorful Hindu temple festival - put on by some of the most exoticized people in India, the transgendered/third sex/kothi community, which has been widely photographed and written about.
When we arrived and were welcomed immediately and enveloped into the scene. The most fascinating thing about spending time in this community, was how within the structure of religion, everything was embraced. At one point some of the performers were teased by a group of drunk boys, and though they were upset, they told us that they would have been far more vulnerable to taunts had they been "actual" women.
The men dressing like women in the context of a religious festival (where that would historically be done), but in this case the men who are dressing up like female goddesses are doing so deliberately in order to express their own desires to dress like women and take up the female role in sex. I also felt concerned about showing the exoticism of this community without any other context. Because "kothis" are often treated as other, or forced to be outsiders, it became even more important to try to show the nuances. The idea was to make pictures beautiful and quiet, while also showing the humanity of these people.
