How Two Producers of ‘Transparent’ Made Their Own Trans Lives More Visible
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The photos Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst took of each other showed a young couple in love. They became an important public record of transgender life.
n a hot night in July at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst perched on stools to discuss their new book of photographs, “Relationship.” It is by far the most personal of the many projects they have worked on together. The photographs chronicle their six-year romance, which ended soon after many of these images were shown at the Whitney Biennial in 2014.
Drucker and Ernst, who are perhaps better known as producers of the Emmy-winning Amazon series “Transparent,” speak regularly about their work. But Drucker is plainly more at ease in the spotlight. She is tall and blond, with eyes as blue as swimming pools. That night she wore a white shift and high-heeled sling-backs, and she kept the microphone in its stand so she could gesture with her hands. The images, she told the audience, were meant as a private visual diary. “There was never an intent to show the photographs, even though we are both art-makers.”
They are both 33 and around the same height, but Ernst appears slighter.
Though Drucker and Ernst are no longer a couple, they chose to publish these photographs anyway, because even as transgender stories are becoming more mainstream, there are few public examples of trans people leading ordinary lives, filled with love and lazy mornings.
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