Lindsay Morris

Photographer
     
The Kids of Camp I Am (Alexia Grant)
Location: Sag Harbor
Nationality: American
Biography: Lindsay Morris received her BFA from the University of Michigan School of Art. Morris discovered her passion for photography on a yearlong Rotary Youth Exchange program in South Africa and continued her photographic studies at the School of the... MORE
URUFINAL.pdf 11.8 MB CV_Alexia.pdf 0.1 MB
Private Story
The Kids of Camp I Am (Alexia Grant)
Copyright lindsay morris 2024
Updated Feb 2022
Topics Children, Family, Film, Friends + Family, Gay, Gay Rights, Gender, Happiness, Journalism, Parenting & Family, Photography, Photojournalism, Portraiture, Sexuality, Social Justice, Teens, Transgender, Youth
Summary
With The Kids of Camp I Am, I intend to contribute to a discourse about the crucial role that support plays in the lives of gender-creative children and take the time to interview the participants about the role that a celebratory camp played in shaping their identities on the journey to becoming who they are today.
P R O P O S A L

I am applying for the Alexia Grant for the opportunity to continue work on my decade long series, You Are You, in its next phase, The Kids of Camp I Am, which documents participants at the pioneering retreat for gender-expansive children, Camp I Am. With this project the viewer experiences something different: a groundbreaking, heart-opening place that served as the backdrop for an important moment in history, where a gender-creative childhood was freely expressed for the first time, during four days of much needed support. I have established myself as both an artist and parent engaged with the people of Camp I Am. With The Kids of Camp I Am, I intend to reach beyond the confines of the camp, to contribute to a discourse about the crucial role that support plays in the lives of gender-creative children, and take the time to interview the participants about the role that this celebratory camp played in shaping their identities on the journey to becoming who they are today.

In 2008 I began offering my services as the camp documentarian so that the children would have several images to turn to throughout the year as memories of this affirming place, where their parents and siblings not only celebrated them but learned to advocate for them when returning to the less protective spaces in their everyday lives. I am building on the project through the relationships forged at camp. My goal is to help normalize the support for the youth in this community, in the national consciousness, and in the worldwide consciousness. In progressing with this series, I would like to illustrate the full spectrum of campers who attended Camp I Am. Before the camp was discontinued in 2016, the population had become more diverse, both ethnically, and where participants landed on the gender spectrum. I am reconnecting with the twenty or more campers whose early images speak to something beyond the existing portraits of female transgender and gay male adult identities, but also to trans men and non-binary campers.

With the updated and juxtaposed-to-younger portrait series, I plan to publish a book with updated resources for the reader and cast a wider net with a traveling exhibition that reaches a wider viewership. This would include universities where discussion panels organized by LGBTQ+ organizations are encouraged, and also venues focused not only on art but on human anthropology such as natural history museums. The Kids of Camp I Am will be, in essence, a historical document – the first documented fully supported community of gender-expansive children on record.
 
An Alexia Grant would afford me the resources to continue my travel around the country to reconnect, interview, and make portraits of the former campers. These young adults know me as a camp parent who attended camp with my son from 2008-2015, and I am therefore well-placed to be a safe liaison for them. I see the images of these kids cataloged as a record in time because so much has changed in the past 10 years in terms of LGBTQ+ rights and progression of views.