Kenny Lemes has created an impressive portfolio titled Dissident Identities including striking images that celebrate transgender and non-binary people while challenging preconceptions and injustices. Despite his way of depicting the human body of gender-nonconforming individuals with a radical irreverence, his photography takes us to the privacy and intimacy of their living spaces to confront our gaze with evidence of our shared humanity. These portraits explore a dialectic between confidence and vulnerability. Kenny’s visual explorations play with a tension between fiction and reality, between the existence of new possible worlds and the creative act. His photographic practice allows Kenny to create images like someone who’s building its own world. A world where we can expand our gaze to find the poetic existence of new and genuine ways to love, perceive oneself, and be happy.

Kenny Lemes (Havana, Cuba, 1985) is a self-taught photographer currently living and working in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His provocative and gender-challenging photography has been recognized by the Argentinian National Salon of Visual Arts, awarding him the second prize in 2021. He also received an Honorable Mention in 2016 by the National Fund for the Arts for his work in Art and Dissidence. Lemes' work is noted for its striking composition, use of light, and the way it captures the raw and often poignant realities of his subjects. His photography invites viewers to engage with the complexities of queer culture and the broader human condition, making his work both visually compelling and thought-provoking.