Evan Schwartz was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1982 under a different name and gender. His new photography series, Reclaiming Puberty, is a maturing timeline about growing up as a girl into a man. Through this self-exploration of gender and sexuality, Schwartz painfully discovers that in order to become the man he’s always wanted to be, he must go through the perils of adolescent boyhood first – after already experiencing adolescence as a girl. Schwartz’ fascination in psychology spurred his interest in photography at a young age and more recently, he has been exploring the world of narrative photography and self-portraiture to better understand his own transformation. Evan Schwartz came out as a transgender male in January of 2003 and recently underwent a double mastectomy and is taking hormones to match body with identity. Reclaiming Puberty Series evolves along with his body and experiences.

On the occasion of George Bush’s Inauguration, Schroeder Romero is pleased to present new text-drawings and watercolors by Michael Waugh in the Project Gallery. Visually beautiful from a distance, on closer examination the drawings offer an obsessive re-working of historical texts, mainly presidential inaugural speeches. Each of the drawings incorporates thousands of words written in a fine ink filigree that collapse historical perspective into a single moment. The drawings meld text associatively with image—with gay marriage, with George Washington as a potential pedophile, with a composite US president who resembles Karttikeya (the Hindu God of war), and with Nazis and Texans meeting in a militaristic scenario of gay desire. Through these painstaking reconfigurations, Waugh subverts the intended meaning of both word and image, leaving viewers with a delicate but disturbing meditation on the nature of history, rhetoric, and the morality of authority.

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James has written about the work of Evan Schwartz.