In photos: Exploring t-fag culture through jockstraps and tiny moustaches

El Hardwick and Orion Isaacs are partners in life, as well as in creativity. Meeting during lockdown, Hardwick, a multi-disciplinary artist, and Isaacs, a film director-writer, initially established contact so they could collaborate creatively, before realising they both wanted something more. Years later, the result is a supportive and intimate dynamic. “We cheer each other on, because we truly and wholeheartedly believe in the worlds we’re building, both individually and as a team,” Isaacs explains. 

Currently, the couple are working on a particularly galvanising project: T-Fags. A series exploring the fluid iconography of queer, transmasculine identity, it speaks to their own experiences as queer, trans, gender-expansive people. After seeing the diversity of cis, gay male depictions in LGBTQIA+ and art bookshops, they noted the lack of transness within these narratives – and set out to fill this cultural void, tapping members of their own extended community to help them do so. 

Beginning as an editorial for the magazine C☆NDY TRANSVERSAL, the project has since grown. Showing at Malta’s queer art space Rosa Kwir as an audio-visual installation in 2022, Hardwick and Isaacs then continued to gather more subjects for the series, and have now decided to expand the body of work into the queer, transmasculine photobook they were searching for all those years ago. The next stage of T-Fags is in flux, but promises to be equally brilliant: Hardwick and Isaacs are currently running a Kickstarter campaign, through which you can pre-order the book and receive creative mentoring.

Below, the duo discuss resisting the flattening, cis gaze, reclaiming historic slurs, and exploring the iconography of queer, transmasculinity.

How did the project develop – creatively, thematically – from its initial concept? 

El Hardwick: We knew we wanted to develop it further into a photo book. It made sense, since the origins of the concept came from searching for it in the bookshops. We put out an open call for more participants and were inundated with responses. The process became really collaborative: we sent everyone a moodboard and asked what fantasies and locations they were drawn to, and went about realising each person’s own expression of faggotry. I think as the project has evolved, it’s become even more sexy, cinematic and referential.

Tell me a bit about the choice of title: was “T-Fag” a reclamation of sorts? 

El Hardwick: Some of the participants in interviews mentioned how odd it can be when a stranger calls you a fag in a derogatory way, even if you’re on your own, wearing a plain hoodie, completely stealth. You wonder what it was that triggered the homophobia in them. But by reclaiming these slurs, that ambiguity becomes empowering, nuanced. Within the word are multiple implications of gender nonconformity, sexuality and the unknown.

How does the title address the difficulty of labelling queer – especially hybrid, or fluid –  identity? 

Orion Isaacs: I really appreciated hearing from so many [of our portraitees] on how their fagginess harmoniously exists alongside dyke identity and numerous other ways of being that are so often needlessly put in opposition with each other. 

El Hardwick: We’ve found through this project that there are so many different definitions for fag, yet they are all contained within this one word. It can be about gender expression, sexuality, a dynamic in a specific relationship, personal style, mannerisms, community, desire.

Through this body of work, how did you broach or expand themes of representation and visibility?

El Hardwick: Sadly, too often trans representation can be really flattened into serving a purpose for the cis gaze. Portraits of trans people taken by cisgender photographers are frequently included in portrait awards and exhibitions in a way that is Othering to us; as if we are only worth documenting if our scars are on show, or our outfits are “slay”. 

Ticking a diversity box for a photo shoot does nothing to materially stop the violence against us, especially our trans sisters who are disproportionately unsafe. So this project is primarily for the queer and trans community, to see ourselves reflected back in an affirming, euphoric, tender way.

You’ve mentioned that one of the initial inspirations behind the series includes Hal Fischer’s Gay Semiotics. How did this work influence T-Fags? 

El Hardwick: Gay Semiotics was a photo book created in 1977, examining the signifiers worn by gay men, particularly when cruising. The most organised of these signifiers being ‘the hankie code’, which indicates sexual preferences through different colours of handkerchiefs, and which pocket they’re worn in. In some ways, it essentially deconstructs that ‘unknown’ thing we were talking about earlier – what is it about you that makes someone clock you’re a fag?

So, how does the series explore the specific iconography of queer, transmasculine culture through fashion and hair?

Orion Isaacs: The styles are incredibly varied but there are definitely some very recognisable throughlines in there! Tank tops. Sporty socks. Jock straps. Chain necklaces. Denim short-shorts. Beaten-up denim jackets, very Americana, very cowboy. Bandanas. Tender tattoos. There are also a lot of intersections with dyke culture, such as leather biker trousers, chunky lace-up boots and sharp barbered hair.

El Hardwick: A recurring response from participants when asked what fagginess means to them was that it is an opportunity to embrace parts of their femininity that they rejected when transitioning. That might mean growing hair longer, or playing with pink and glitter and lace. But equally others are really connected to subcultures of fagginess that reimagine masculinity too: the leather daddies, the bears, Freddie Mercury in a white vest with a moustache.

Let’s discuss your immediate plans for the project – the Kickstarter campaign, as well as the book?

Orion Isaacs: Everything is riding on this Kickstarter. We really want to hammer home that by pledging on Kickstarter you are essentially pre-ordering a book – so head on over now to reserve your copy, as well as accessing exclusive limited edition prints, and even portrait sittings and mentoring sessions.

El has a wealth of knowledge about photography, having worked as a photographer since the age of fourteen, and I have taught in-depth to students around scriptwriting and directing, both one-one-one and at universities. So the mentoring sessions are a rare opportunity for folks to get support for a project they are working on, if it’s in any of our areas of expertise. 

We also have an option on Kickstarter for bookshops to pledge for copies at trade price – we would love to make sure it is on LGBTQIA+ and art bookshelves all over! If we reach our goal – and that’s a big if!  – we will launch the book at the Photobook Cafe in Shoreditch on 24th February, and have a big party.

What would it mean to have this project printed and tactile? How would it feed into ideas of queer archiving?

Orion Isaacs: I hate what the online realm is doing to how we perceive photographs, especially photos taken on film. All this luscious detail gets lost on our tiny screens and in a whirl of dopamine depletion. It was such an embodied experience making this series, both for us and for the participants, and so it makes sense for these images to be received in an embodied way.

El Hardwick: This whole project started because we were looking on the shelves of bookshops for a book that didn’t exist. If we aren’t able to make this series into something you can hold, there will still be this distinct absence on the shelves that we wanted to change. Making this series into a physical, tactile object is an important way of claiming our space in the world.

To reserve the book, and other rewards, support the T-Fags Kickstarter before the campaign ends on 13th November, 11am GMT.