Film-maker T Cooper has used the world’s only all-trans bodybuilding competition as the window into a kaleidoscope of trans male stories
In a locker room in Atlanta, a group of men – black, brown and spray-tanned, some carved like Hercules, others softer – flex their muscles. The camera lingers on their bodies, each hinting at larger stories – there are top surgery scars and bandages, chests with breast tissue. The gaze is direct and uncompromising, but not ogling – a scene of different presentations of masculinity literally presenting to judges, an audience and the camera of film-maker T Cooper.
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