My initial interest in taking photographs of transvestites was due to my wanting to pay homage to the Swedish photographer Christer Stromholm and to acknowledge his influence in my own work.
In the early 1980s I attended his exhibition of My Friends from the Place Blanche in Oslo and was astounded by the emphatic and compassionate display of transvestites and transgendered prostitutes from the early 1960s Montmartre district in Paris. These works were not exploitative, nor did it attempt to portray transvestites as glossy glamour models, but as human beings caught between two rigid sexual roles in which neither category could be applied to them. His portraits taught me what photography could really achieve as an art form, and made me want to explore the world on my own with a camera. The camera was a ticket into other worlds, unexplored territories, and could be used to tear apart preconceived judgments.
Danijela in Red