Statement

I’m a self-taught photographer in Asheville, North Carolina, making pictures about the body under pressure. My work centers queer and trans people in my community and the ways power, trust, and vulnerability get negotiated between us. For several years I’ve photographed the lifestyles we lead, I’m drawn to the depth of skill applied to sexual and platonic practices within our community: rope, mummification, drowning. I love to photograph behavior that some in our community celebrates and others keep in shadow. My current series, Flag, turns that same language toward power that is imposed rather than chosen, using the American flag as a material that covers, binds, and conceals. I work in both digital and historic processes, including printing with platinum/palladium.

Bio

Jenny Treat (she/her) is a self-taught photographer based in Asheville, North Carolina. Born in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to parents raised in Marion in the state’s southwestern Appalachian corner, she makes work rooted in that region and in the queer and trans communities of western North Carolina. Her photographs treat the body as a site where power, trust, and vulnerability are negotiated, across portraiture, studies of consensual restraint, and the Appalachian landscape. She works in digital and historic photographic processes, including platinum/palladium printing.