ERIN O’TOOLE: Who was April Dawn Alison?
Hi, I’m Erin O’Toole, curator of photography here at SFMOMA.
What we discovered was that name was adopted by the artist and we found the name on several of the Polaroids.
And so, we knew that was the name that the artist called herself, but we also discovered that in her daily life in the world that she lived as a man and her name was Alan Schaefer.
Alan Schaefer made a living as a commercial photographer and was trained in the military as a photographer, and may not have been in front of the camera much before.
In today’s world, we put our ideas about “ourself” out into the world to show other people, but what’s interesting about these pictures is that she made them for herself.
We ultimately don’t know what April Dawn intended for these for these pictures. Our sense from speaking to her neighbors and to family members is that April Dawn was a private persona.
That being said, that doesn’t mean that she didn’t hope that one day somebody would see them.
One of the things that really resonated was the importance of visibility to the trans community and what would it mean to not show pictures like this, pictures that are of this incredible quality and I think on balance, the sense was that these pictures just demand to be seen because they’re so good. They’re really great.
