Grace Baey is a Singapore-based photographer and filmmaker who has been widely exhibited. Trained as a human geographer she is especially interested in issues of migration and mobility, gender, identity and place. Her personal projects focus on transgender and queer identity in Southeast Asia.
This image from her ‘Living Choices’ series has personal conflict bubbling under its serene surface. It portrays Chris, a 19-year-old trans woman, posing with her doting grandfather in Yangon, Myanmar. She had moved into his house after facing family pressure back home in Bahan Township (one of the more upmarket areas of Yangon), where her relatives insist on her living life as a heterosexual man. Although largely accepting of her gender identity, Chris’s grandfather is particularly concerned for her future, as well as the potential health risks involved with gender confirmation surgery. He insisted she change into male clothing to be photographed with him.
