EIP: You grew up in Florida after your family immigrated seeking asylum. How has that experience shaped your perspective and artistic practice?
DANNY: Bush and Obama’s Florida was an interesting place to grow up in. At that time, I was nine and could not process what was happening because I had to condition myself quickly to be accepted. Whitewashing came from within my home, influenced by the community in our church, where they expressed that to succeed, you have to let go of your mother tongue, stay out of the sun, and only have white friends. Being who I am, I grew up with a self-complex of being a “black sheep” since all of these things felt unnatural to me. Much of my practice is reclaiming the time that I spent growing up in Florida, where I was unable to be my authentic queer self and connect with my Colombian heritage. I found that as a Latine immigrant, American ideology entices racism among migrants by creating colonial codes like “Hispanics,” where an entire ethnic group becomes marginalized under one identity. An identity often caricatured by white ignorance and racism.
EIP: What do you hope viewers take away from the way you represent queerness and non-binary identities in your work?
DANNY: I want them to be enlightened. I want viewers to see the humanity in the queerness that has been demonized by religious morality. I want people to recognize the difference between sex and gender and understand that these are two different parts of someone’s identity. I want the viewers to stop fearing us and embrace us like anybody else.
EIP: How did the idea of rebirth and second puberty shape the way you photographed Xaneri?
DANNY: It can be a challenge not to overthink things in photography. You often subconsciously produce something, and its meaning does not appear until later. Usually, the viewers are the ones who help you navigate what your intentions are since they are the ones making sense of the image. When I photographed Xaneri in “Nace Una Flor,” it was the first time I had met her. Her maturity and sense of accomplishment at such a young age stood out. While shooting the photo, she began sharing her decision to transition and how she would soon start taking steps to begin her journey. I did not get to work on the image until a few months later, and at that time, Xaneri had already started transitioning. The photo became a nostalgic memory celebrating her bravery and a pivotal moment in her life. The rose petals were intended to bring a romantic aesthetic to the image but became a link to her grandmother and her retellings of “when a Muxe (third-gender) is born, the room fills with the smell of fresh flowers.”
EIP: What themes are you currently exploring in your work, and how do you see your practice evolving in the future?
DANNY: While photographing and showing this series to my friends in Oaxaca, I began longing to rediscover my Colombian roots. I have not returned to Colombia since we left in November of 2000. I feared exploring and sharing my diaspora because I was aware that this type of pain could create art that appeals to the fetishizing of a white audience. It’s tough to create non- representational art when all of yourself is going into your work. I have gathered the intelligence and memory to give me the power to tell my story. I’m also very excited to continue working with eroticism and exploring methods of bringing the photograph and my experience mixing combat sports and sex outside of the photography plane. Materials like textiles, mirrors, and photo transfers help the viewer understand this experience.
EIP: In your work, you challenge the idea of gender as a colonial construct. How do you see photography as a tool for reclaiming pre-colonial understandings of identity?
Representation matters, and gender expression has been documented since the beginning of photography but demonized by the zeitgeist as pornography or adultery. — Danny
I think having access to these memories of queer people before us is one of the most important things for us to move forward as a society and community. Much of the queer history that is available represents the experiences of athletic, gay cis-gender white men. I think it is essential for us as a community to give equity and agency to people outside of the queer margins set in place by heteronormativity. Queer people have always existed in every society, and we will continue to because queerness is part of nature.
