BRIAR M. PINE
Camouflaged
Camouflaged (2024-Present) explores my patriarchal lineage to investigate the formation of American masculinities. Both photography and the masculine culture I was raised in share a similar history regarding the environment; a history mired in ideas of control, domination, and extraction. I utilize materials associated with this version of masculinity, such as camouflage, blaze orange, and military patterning, to question how transmasculine identities can oscillate between assimilating into the patriarchal cultural environment or standing out against it.
In making each portrait, I undergo transformations to question how I dismantle, uphold, or complicate the patriarchal ideologies embedded within United States culture. In several photographs, I employ self-camouflaging techniques borrowing from military and hunting culture, as well as natural systems, to explore my visibility as a trans person. Successful camouflage helps one to blend into the environment and become unrecognizable, but I am interested instead in using the material to become hypervisible, confronting the viewer with what it means to be trans in a society that caters to a gender binary.
Throughout the series, I reflect on my lived experience and relationships with the men in my family to explore my place within the familial patriarchal structure. I use personal artifacts such as my and my father’s hair, hunting and scavenging trophies, testosterone, and family photographs to trace my relationships and history. For example, Self-Portrait With My Father and Brother investigates the rituals and rites of passage that were passed down from father to son. In this photograph, I am holding an image of my father and brother at a hunting trip they take together each fall. My exclusion from these rites creates the space in which this project is born, questioning what is and what is not passed down and imagining alternative masculinities to embody.