This body of work is about Izel Terronez, a twenty-one year male who suffers from gender dysphoria, which means that she is discontent with the gender she was assigned at birth. In Izel’s case, she is a woman trapped in a man’s body. This project is a look at the early stages of a very large change in her life. My work looks at her past and present relationships, including her parents who both died tragic deaths – her father shooting himself in the head when she was fifteen and her mother overdosing on methamphetamine just weeks before I began this project. My project looks at her relationship with her relationship with her drug-addicted, stripper girlfriend, with whom she broke up with for committing sexual acts for money. Above all, this work is about the struggle Izel seeks for happiness in her own body in the face of psychologists telling her she can not begin hormone therapy for another year.

My project is an un-staged documentation of the months before Izel’s transformation. I shot my project in black-and-white to keep a consistent style among images that were shot over several months, as well as to show the world through her eyes since she is colorblind. The high-contrast and narrow depth-of-field in my images draw in viewers to the finer details of the images that play a pivotal role in tell Izel’s story.

Although the subject of this project is another person, it is still a very personal to me. The transgendered community is a social taboo in our culture. As a gay man, I have my own frustrations with society’s close-minded tendencies when it comes to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues. This project is my attempt to achieve an understanding of why someone would want to completely change his or her identity as a person, something that I have not experienced much of in my life. The most important part of my existence of a photojournalist is exploring ways of life and people that I do not understand rather than responding to them with hostility, which is a trait that the majority of our society lacks.

This is an ongoing project, but the moments before the transition are important to show that people that go through this change are real, everyday people like you and me.

A photograph of Izel with her sister and late father hangs prominently in the doorway to her room. Her father accidentally shot himself in the head when she was 15-years-old.

On a visit to her psychologist in late January, she was told that she would have to wait a year to begin hormone treatment. The psychologist was hesitant to let her begin treatment due to past suicide attempts and the recent death of her mother.

Unsatisfied with the quality of living in her house in a poor neighborhood in Southwest Oklahoma City, Izel decided to spray paint her walls to upset her landlord. She had already lost her deposit.

Izel was involved in a romantic relationship with a woman for months. She was a hula hoop dancer at a strip club in South Oklahoma City. Izel discovered that she was using meth and performing sexual acts for money and they ended their relationship.

Following laser hair removal treatments, Izel felt more comfortable with the idea of dressing in women’s clothing.

Tattoos in memory of both of her parents – her father died when she was fifteen, and her mother died of a meth overdose in late 2012.

-Garett Fisbeck