Artist Spotlight: Del LaGrace Volcano
BY Christopher Harrity
Volcano delights in subverting the old-school rules of gender presentation.
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/artist-spotlight/2012/09/15/artist-spotlight-del-lagrace-volcano#slide-1Gender variant, gender abolitionist, gender terrorist — these are a few terms to describe Del LaGrace Volcano and the photographs work s/He produces.
"My intention is to explode the notion of the truthful body," says Volcano. "My work demonstrates how physiological sex is every bit as much of a cultural construct as gender. Although we all know that the relationship between a photograph and the truth is unreliable at best, we still want to believe what our eyes tell us."
A pioneer of LGBT photography, Volcano's work undercuts assumptions about the legibility of gender. Volcano is widely celebrated as a significant figure at the center of a conversation about the body, gender and sexuality. Volcano's book Love Bites, was one of the first of photos of lesbian sexuality, it caused a huge uproar for the edgy imagery, and is still considered a classic. In a survey of portraits and self-portraits, Volcano, with disarming frankness, charts the often complicated relationship between physical transformation and shifting identifications.
