This image is taken from my 24 series,
a collection of self-portraits exploring what it’s like growing up with
HIV. I was born with the virus – I’ve never known life without it. I
wanted to explore how this can feel, how it can look, how living with
HIV has differed from what I expected. All the photos are glamorous,
very cinematic and theatrical, as if I’m on stage or in a film. It’s a
kind of re-imagination: what my life might have been like had things
been different.
I took the shot in 2015, but it had been in my head for a long time.
I’m with my doctor, whose surgery I have visited regularly since the age
of four. He checks my blood and monitors my numbers to make sure I’m
healthy. The photo shows what I see in my head when I go for check-ups. I
suppose it’s a kind of fantasy. The dress is the one I wore to my
school prom. The colour, the glamour, the juxtaposition – there’s an
element of fashion photography, something that has always inspired me.
But it’s also a political statement. HIV has now been following me
for 27 years. Transforming it into art is one way to shake myself free,
to show that painful things can also be beautiful. I wasn’t supposed to
live long enough to see a prom. So this is my way of being defiant and
resilient, of saying: “I’m still here.”
There is also a sense of history to it, though: I’m sitting on the
same bed my mother sat on, which she no longer sits on. I released this
on the 11th anniversary of her death. That’s why the shot’s called
Eleven. I felt very alone after I lost her, but I learned how to be with
myself and started taking these images. Sitting in that same spot, it’s
almost like I have taken her place.
I grew up dancing and, for a long time now, have been involved in the
New York voguing scene. Voguing is a dance form inspired by the poses
in Vogue magazine. Black and brown queer people weren’t featured on its
pages, so they took the poses and turned them into an art form and a
culture.
In dance, every movement is a picture. Your lines have to be so
clean: if someone were to capture the moment, any moment, it should look
perfect. So in this shot, I’m playing with the element of fantasy in
voguing culture’s origins. If I got that Vogue shoot, what would it look
like? This could be my cover, my editorial, my life in print.
Kia LaBeija.
Kia LaBeija’s CV
Born: Hell’s Kitchen, New York, 1990. Studied: “Mostly self-taught, but while I was studying at The New School I took photography courses.” Influences: “Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Steven Meisel, David LaChapelle and Jean-Paul Goude. But my greatest influence, without question, is my mother.” High point: “I was invited to the White House last
year. I was with all of these brown and black people talking about the
future of HIV/Aids.” Low point: “I haven’t hit a low point and I won’t hit a low point.” Top tip: “Trust your instincts, trust your eye.”
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