Sonja Rieger hoped people would see the beauty and the personalities of the people she photographed for her exhibit “Dazzling.” The nearly life-sized portraits are indeed striking with the subjects photographed against black backdrops.
The portraits are of the men who participate in the Platinum International Newcomer’s Pageant, an predominantly African American drag queen pageant held in a makeshift club near Birmingham. The pageant crowns a king and queen and winners spend their reign doing community activism as representatives of the pageant.
“Dazzling” is currently on exhibit at the Wiregrass Museum of Art in downtown Dothan.
Rieger’s subjects are either competing in the pageant or participating as dressers, makeup artists, judges, sound specialists or even audience members. Invited by the pageant’s founder, Rieger sets up her lights and black backdrops in the dressing room area.
A photography professor at UAB’s College of Arts and Sciences, Rieger began the portrait series eight years ago.
“I never saw the show,” Rieger said of the pageant. “I ended up getting very connected to them because I saw it from the inside out. They were very kind of personal and protective of my equipment … I think what I noticed was the incredible amount of talent. So, if you look, they all have learned theater makeup. They’ve all made their own costumes. They have these complete personas.”
Some of the men are gay. Some identify themselves as either transsexual or transgender. Some live as both men and women. Some live completely as women.
Rieger, who attended an Art After Hours event in July at the Wiregrass Museum of Art, will be back at the museum on Aug. 14 to discuss her exhibit.
“Dazzling” began in the nursing home where Rieger’s mother lived. That’s where Rieger met a nursing home attendant who asked her to photograph his pageant, the Platinum International Newcomer’s Pageant.
“It’s really a family,” Rieger said of the pageant and its participants. “They spend all their time together. They go to everything. Every weekend, they all go to the same pageants.”
As Rieger wrote in her own artist’s statement about “Dazzling,” the photographs allow her to show “the beauty and the vulnerability of these black men who are wrestling with their sexual identity” while also showing their “dazzling personas.”
When her photographic portraits were first exhibited, the reaction was what Rieger had hoped it would be.
“Instead of having any kind of condescending approach or thinking it’s odd or whatever, I think people really saw a sense of dignity and a recognition of the abilities and talents that were photographed,” Rieger said.
