With this intimate series of images, Rebecca Swan launches an inquiry into the understanding of gender across cultures, nations, and generations. Assume Nothing features frank and arresting images of twenty-five participants, along with their candid—and sometimes heartrending—comments about what it has meant to exist outside of traditional gender identities.
The participants range in age from twenty to sixty. They are Haitian American, Samoan New Zealander, Maori, European Australian, Aboriginal, and African English. They are gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, and pansexual. In terms of gender, they are transsexuals, gender queers, eunuchs, sister girls, drag kings and queens, and the alternative gender roles traditional to Maori and Samoan cultures.
In their blurring of boundaries, Swan’s images ask readers to examine their assumptions—and even, at moments, their own sexuality. They reveal the harm that results from forcing living bodies to conform to preexisting roles and capture a deeper reality of struggle, uncertainty, and process. Above all, they point the way to the creation of a new vocabulary of gender and a world of increased tolerance where, when it comes to gender, nothing is assumed.
Praise for Assume Nothing
“I’m in love with Rebecca Swan’s perspective, which is rare. When many other people begin to intellectualize the notion that gender does not exist, I often wonder if they are intuitively glimpsing the finer essence of who they really are, beyond the denser vibration of duality expressed here in 3D—or if they are simply giving accepted notions of gender a negative political spin: 'Gender oppresses all! I am no gender!' Of course, those people are doing gender as much as anyone else is. I like what Swan sees. And the work is stunning. She is very talented.” —Loren Rex Cameron, author of Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits
"Not only does Rebecca Swan provide us with a timely and evocative motto for the 21st century, she does it with style and panache. Assume Nothing shows us what it looks like when theory is put into practice with love and considerable skill." —Del LaGrace Volcano, gender variant visual artist and activist
"These images can literally take your breath away! Rebecca Swan’s photos virtually pulse with the dynamic spirits of unrestrained genders: all things are possible. The brave and tender hearts bared here display your own humanity." —Jamison Green, author of Becoming a Visible Man
