Jayme Sojourn Drew was deep in Canada’s Yukon territory in 2022 when the idea for the All the Genders Photo Project came to them. They were driving the thousands of miles back home to Norfolk, thinking of life and the way gender shapes it.
Drew is now working on publishing their book, “Northern Lights, Northern Lives,” an extension of that broader project. The book is a collection of Drew’s photographs of 50 people living across Alaska and the Yukon and their reflections on how gender has shaped their lives, accompanied by Drew’s musings on the experience of traveling through some of the continent’s most remote communities.
Drew hopes the book starts conversations about gender that can cross regions, cultures and the urban-rural divide. They said it is important now as hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ+ people, and especially the transgender community, are being introduced in the country.
“I want readers to just see fellow neighbors and human beings who are simply just having a different experience of life in this one element of humanity, being gender, than they might be having,” Drew said.
Drew explored gender diversity through photos after a season as a park ranger at Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, a job they took after getting burnt out from 13 years in Army and civilian healthcare. Drew hadn’t done much portrait photography, but dived in anyway.
“People just really want to be seen the way that they want to be seen, in the way that they feel internally as well,” they said. “In a lot of our dialogue today, we have just overly simplified notions and misconceptions and stories about certain groups of people and I just think people just feel frustrated with being lumped into these really specific stereotypes and talking points.”
The book is 250 pages with each person displayed in two to three photos where each felt safest, most connected or most themselves, whether that was waterside or working on a truck.
When they launched the project, Drew didn’t intend for it to focus so heavily on the northern reaches of the continent. Drew grew up in New Hampshire and spent eight years in the Army. They started identifying as transgender at 30 with three years left on their contract, but hid that part of themself in military environments.
After leaving the Army, Drew moved to Norfolk and stayed in healthcare, but continued to run into transphobia and homophobia. They began looking for a change and applied to park ranger jobs across the country, taking the one in Soldotna. Drew had been thinking about becoming a ranger for a while, feeling that it would offer a greater sense of freedom, especially the ability to be openly queer.
“Being more comfortable in my workplace sort of set the foundation for the thoughts and musings that led to this,” Drew said. “I was very attached to that region.”
The season ended in September 2022 and they thought up the project during the more than 4,500-mile drive home. Drew spent the next several months preparing to return to northwestern North America the following spring. To their excitement, Drew got more interest in the project from the people there than expected.
Drew has since traversed 20,000 miles by road and 10,000 by air. Sometimes they connected with people through local LGBTQ+ organizations or social media, spending the occasional $5 on Instagram ads in places Drew knew they’d be passing through. But several times, Drew would stop in unfamiliar small towns and strike up conversations.
Drew found vibrant queer communities in Juneau and remote settings where LGBTQ+ people stayed out of view for fear of harassment and death threats. Sometimes, running into “rainbow aversion” in a small town inspired Drew to look harder for queer people in that community.
“I honestly wasn’t anticipating how powerful the experience would be for a lot of people,” they said.
The book also includes photos and writings from cisgender people, those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Drew wants everyone who picks it up to have an entry point to consider how gender shapes how they live.
“This is an element of our humanity that I think we should all be thinking about,” Drew said. “I want them to just see people.”
