“It’ s Show time” is a project which took me one year (2012-2013) to complete. It contains five photographic portraits of two Drag Queens and myself as a Drag Queen.
I photographed Drag Queens both in England and Greece. My aim was to depict the man-to-woman transformation in the dressing room, where it would be easier for me to discern the various aspects of their personality and their lifestyle. I also photographed myself dressed up as a Drag Queen in order to get a grasp on their mentality. My inspiration for this project has two parts. The first idea came up some years ago when I worked as a sales assistant at Kryolan Company, which sells professional makeup products and deals with special effects make-up. Kryolan had many Drag Queen clients throughout these years, therefor it was easy for me to get close to these people and let them inspire me. I believe that what Drag Queens do is definitely a type of art, and consequently what motivated me to take pictures of Drag Queens was their courageous decision to move forward with a man-to-woman transformation in a conservative society which in many cases seems to be acting repressively in terms of self-expression and gender orientation.
For my exhibition I came up with the idea to display my images in frames that I personally constructed to be similar to the lighted professional makeup mirrors that are used in dressing rooms. I made that decision because I thought that the photographs are going to look much more realistic in this way. The desired result is to give the impression that each individual Drag Queen is looking at themself in the mirror.
