Sunday, 1st July, 2007

A Blatantly Personal View About trannyflickr

flickr photography rant

The problems I have with the current situation in trannyflickr aren't limited to the notions of "shit in the pool" that I ranted about last week. It's not even, I have to say, a question of "quantity over quality" for me. I'm reading through the discussion that's going on at the moment, lamenting over the demands for a "dumping ground" or a place "to host our pictures", and even though there are — in amongst the bleatings — some wise and considered words, I haven't seen too much discussion about "intent".

I was going to write something like this the other night — after my 2000th picture post — but I was tired and geeked-out after all that coding...

I first started using Flickr in January 2005. I was dragged in by Mr Betteridge (who I'd only just met, come to think of it), who proclaimed it to be a "really cool thing you should be a part of".

I didn't get it at first — "so I can upload pictures. How novel" — but I soon realised that Flickr was a lot more about just shoving JPEGs on an external server — it was about the networks and connections you made whilst doing it.

And not only that — there were Things™ that you could use in your blog. Stuff to make the whole process of 'life-logging' a lot more simpler.

This was A New Thing™ — not just an image-dump, but a space to explore, to socialise, to meet, to discuss, outside of the normal spaces that I continuosly found pictures of me inhabiting.

I engaged with the Flickr community quite tentatively at first. Initially I only shoved on the general 'life-dump' shots — the ephemera from my day to day life — in ways that got automaticaly squirted into my blog. Soon though, I was uploading some of my work, and (obviously) some of my girl-shots.

The thing that surprised me about the whole experience, was that I started to make contact with people I'd never normally associate myself with — photographers, artists, designers, general everyday people rather than the usual tranny crowd. Suddenly I was being made a contact by people I'd never expect to come anywhere near my work — and not one single one of them ever had a problem with who/what I am.

That's the main thing for me — that the responses I've had from people have never once been derogatory purely on the basis of me being a tranny. And that's the general vibe I get from Flickr — a relaxed environment, a progressive environment, where the quality of what you produce and upload is never taken in context of prejudices about what you might be.

And I like to think, that in the process of all of this, I put some photographs in front of people that they normally wouldn't see. And in doing so, I made them rethink a little about things they might not even have thought about before.

In a lot of ways, I have found that by enagaging with the Flickr community, I have somehow managed to achieve a sense of self-validation. I feel able to be proud about what I am, and I think I owe a lot of that to (a) me getting involved, and (b) the wonderful people I've met along the way.

And then, of course, I came into contact with Miss K and Erica. I can't remember which happened first — did I read K's blog and find trannyflickr, or did I find trannyflickr then read K's blog because of it?

I don't suppose it really matters to be honest — what matters is that here, in a corner of the interweb, were other people who were having the same experiences as I was — other people who were doing things. Things Out. There.

Here was a collection of wonderful photographs that were raising the bar, pushing the fold about what is and isn't a "tranny photo". Waving things in other people's faces. Being A Bit Fucking Radical™ even.

And that, to me, is what's special about trannyflickr — it's a little beacon of progressiveness and sanity in amongst a sea of beige. I mean, of course not all tranny groups on Flickr are tedious, it's just that a lot of them have descended into old-skool (how ironic) forms of expression — walled gardens of backward thinking, AJAX-enabled forums of the past.

I look through a lot of them (apart from the member-only ones, which I resolutely refuse to join) and I hardly ever see any signs of engagement with the community at large. Not a jot of progressiveness. Not a sign that it ever occurred to any of their members to say "Hey, we could actually do something really good here".

A fair wee while ago, I asked a question in the discussions along the line of "So, why do we all post pictures?". I think I was quite relieved that the true intent behind my question was misread as "why do we post pictures of ourselves online?", me not being in a very self-defending state at the time.

But what I was really asking, was "Why do we put our pictures into the group pool? What do we get out of it? What does it do for our community?"

Because the last part of that question is the most important for me. I do — rightly or wrongly, and I hope 'rightly' — feel that I have, just a little bit mind, done stuff for our community by posting my photos onto Flickr. I do feel — like I said — that I've presented a different idea about what a "transvestite" or a "tranny" or a "crossdresser" is to a few people.

Not massives of people, just a few.

But it occurs to me that that prospect doesn't enter the minds of a lot of the posters to trannyflickr (or the other groups for that matter) — it's all about "me me me!". It's all about "take take take!".

It's all about getting views, and comments, and support, and kudos — rather than giving.

Sure, people give support to each other, but they don't give support to the community. In fact, I'd suggest that they 'desupport' the community by consistantly lowering the bar, and steering interesting new things back to a comfortably bland status quo.

The shift in focus on trannyflickr has been away from the challenging and the radical, towards a 'safety'. It's no longer about making a set of images that we can show the world and be proud of — it's about creating an inward-looking swapsie meet, where the target 'audience' is no longer "them outside", but "us in here".

People don't — as a rule — post photographs to show the world, they post photographs to show other trannies. And when the entire audience becomes the same people that are performing, there's absolutely no objective criticism, no forard movement. No point.

Some of the attitudes that I've seen expressed in the discussion about the current suspension have saddened me completely. The truly selfish nature of some people's intentions have really staggered me.

As I said to K the other night when we were out drinking, I want to care about that group again — the same way that I care about some of the others I'm a part of. I want trannyflickr to make its way into the column on the right — the "Groups we've noticed" column — because I think it belongs there.

We used to have a wonderful space we could have been proud of, but because some people have never bothered to really think about things, because some people have soiled it with their own selfish intentions, because some people can't see five metres in front of their blinkered presuppositions about what a "tranny site" should and could be, we've ended up with something that's a poor, desaturated shadow of it's former self — with a radiator in the background.

Trannyflickr is not a forum. It is not a dumping ground. It is not a support group.

It is a unique and powerful thing — or rather, it was, but it will be again.

but I do worry a little that you're falling into the trap of getting annoyed because someone doesn't enjoy something in the same way you do. It's probably not the case

No, that's a fair criticism, and one I worry about. Who am I to say how something should be used?

But then again, I guess in my defence, what I'm doing is pointing out the potential of something, that I feel a lot of people haven't quite noticed.

Perhaps