Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity, gender, sexuality, and community through photographic portraiture. She holds a BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, a master of liberal arts in museum studies from Harvard University, and an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been widely exhibited at venues including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the San Diego Museum of Art; the Aperture Foundation, New York; the Transformer Station, Cleveland; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Dugan’s books include Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015) and To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018). She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and was selected by the White House as a Champion of Change. She is represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL.
Jess T. Dugan uses photography to explore gender and sexuality. Her celebrated book, “To Survive on This Shore”, is a collection of photographs and interviews that document the joys and challenges of the lives of trans people over fifty.