Episode Details

Today is the last day of Pride Month! To celebrate an excellent month of Pride programming on the Artalogue, host Madison Beale chats with photographer Wynne Neilly.  Award-winning, Toronto based photographer Wynne Neilly talks about portrait photography as an act of care, and how his queer and trans identity shapes both what he photographs and how he builds trust with the people in front of the camera. 

Neilly traces his path from a high school darkroom to art school mentorship and a practice rooted in relational intimacy. We get into why self-portraiture can be more challenging than traditional portraiture, especially while navigating aging, and the uniquely confronting experience of turning your own gaze back on yourself. He also breaks down what it means to treat the camera as a real tool, not just a content machine, and how the shift from film culture to smartphones changed the craft, the job market, and the pressure to define “success.” 

We spend some time discussing Neilly's early project “Female to Male,” Neilly's long-running Polaroid and installation self-documentation project that captured early transition week by week, which then erupted online after it was picked up by a news outlet and pushed him into a public spotlight. He reflects on the double-edged sword of visibility, the way trans work can be flattened into spectacle and sidelined, and what it takes to reclaim your own narrative over a decade later. 

Then we go behind the scenes of the Elliot Page Time magazine cover: the surprising email, the pandemic-era intimacy of a tiny set, the stress of shooting film under pressure, and the rare gift of creative freedom in an editorial context. We also discuss what it means to work in Canada today, and how some artists can find it rather stifling. If you care about LGBTQ+ art, trans representation, photography, and making images with real meaning, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review saying what part of Neilly's story resonated most with you. 

HAPPY PRIDE!

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