Jesse Egner

he/him jesseegner.com @jesseegner

My gayness and my non-normative body are in a constant battle within me. As a gay man who is fat and has an invisible disability, I have faced countless rejection from my fellow gay community members, putting me in a precarious relationship with my own identity. Through my work, I am reminded of this relationship and the feelings of self-hatred, shame, and disgust that now run through my entire life and are constantly reinforced by new confirmative experiences.  Absurdity, humor, and the uncanny became the tools I used to navigate this relationship, and photography serves as a platform in which I utilize these tools. They are how I proclaimed my individuality and declared the justification of my existence. They are my flamboyancy.  

“Ad Corpus”—a play on the term “ad hominem”—looks back at what originally made me feel othered—my body. Inspired by a stay at a house with mirrors on many of its walls and surfaces which forced me to be constantly faced with my physical presence, this work examines the fortified relationship between queerness, queer visual culture, and corporeality. Acceptance of a non-normative body into queer visual spaces is often predicated on that body’s ability to assimilate into traditional expectations of beauty and physicality. Using a visual language of “body neutrality,” this series contains photographs of queer bodies that are meant to be neither grotesque nor beautiful,  as well as particular interactions between queer bodies, reflections, and environments.