Photographer/Director: Oliver Barile @oliver.barile
Talent: Jae Matthiesen @jae.matthiesen
Makeup: Joey Elliot @elliotsfx
Stylist: Jacob Nicholas @yacobknowsbest
Hair/Movement Direction: Jaden Brown @evolution.artistry
BTS Photo: Dominic De Luna @dominicdeluna
Photo Assistant: Taylor Caraballo @tayc.photo
Look 1: Rachel Sacksner @rachelsacksner; Look 2: Instinct @instinct.brand; Look 3: Vyle Studio @vyle.studio; Jewelry provided by Alexis Bittar @alexisbittar and Nomi Trefethen @ffd.bynomi
Jae Matthisen began modeling one year ago, and now at age 24, has been able to walk in fashion shows, work with Entertainment Tonight and direct campaigns for queer owned brands like Tuck It Uppp, as well as have her work featured in Rolling Stone Magazine. She’s hosted a fashion show for trans youth, and has created a platform for herself, amassing over one hundred thousand followers. But Jae hasn’t always lived a fashion-forward life in NYC. She grew up in South Dakota with a drastically different childhood, playing dress-up and trying to find ways to express herself in a conservative, rural area. When she was 17, she ran away from home and moved to Minneapolis, and then Chicago before finally finding her home in New York.
“I moved to New York because it’s something I’ve wanted for a really long time. I’ve always been a city girl, and even when I was younger, I could picture myself spending my early 20s in New York. There was always something about the energy of the city that drew me to it,” says Matthisen. Most recently, Jae started Preserve the Dolls, a physical and film archive of real moments with trans women after feeling that trans womanhood wasn’t being captured in a way that was raw, especially by mainstream media.
After an editorial photoshoot with Oliver Barile, So.Gay sat down with Jae to ask her about her project, Preserve the Dolls and the impact of what she’s creating for trans women and the queer community as a whole.
So.Gay: Preserve the Dolls is rooted in creating a lasting record of trans women’s lives. What made you feel that this archive needed to exist?
Jae: I feel like Preserve The Dolls is needed because trans people deserve to see themselves reflected in their own history. When you look through mainstream history, there are still so many gaps when it comes to trans people and our lives. Trans people have always existed, but so much of our history has gone undocumented, been overlooked, or been told through perspectives outside of our community. I wanted to create something that could be part of changing that—to document us as full human beings and preserve the parts of our lives that don’t always get remembered. Our joy, our friendships, our fashion, our relationships, our softness, our aging, and the everyday moments that make up a life.
Trans people’s existence is constantly being challenged, and I wanted to create something that says: we were here. We existed. We loved, we lived, we created, and we found joy. I also think there’s something really important about creating a lineage for younger trans people. I want them to be able to look at these photographs and not only see people who came before them, but see a future for themselves. To see that they can grow older, thrive, love, create, and have a full life.
That’s why I feel like Preserve The Dolls is needed. We deserve to have our lives documented beautifully, by us, and on our own terms.
So.Gay: Much of mainstream media presents trans women through curated or limited narratives. How are you approaching Preserve the Dolls differently?
Jae: I’m not interested in creating one image of what a trans woman is supposed to be. Preserve The Dolls is community-driven and intentionally multi-generational. I want trans youth and trans elders to exist within the same visual lineage. I want to document the beauty, but also the humanity and the moments that aren’t necessarily polished or designed for public consumption.
We’re often expected to explain our existence or represent an entire community. I wanted to create a space where trans women don’t have to represent anything. They can simply be. There can be glamour and softness, but there can also be laughter, awkwardness, intimacy, aging, friendship, and ordinary everyday life. Those things are historically important too, even if they don’t always look important in the moment. And I’m very intentional about the fact that we’re documenting this ourselves. The gaze isn’t coming from someone looking in and deciding which parts of our lives are worth preserving.
So.Gay: You’ve spoken about eventually bringing the archive into museums and creating a physical book later on. What do you hope someone decades from now will understand about this generation of trans women when they encounter your work?
Jae: I hope they understand that we were so much more than the circumstances surrounding us. But more than anything, I hope this archive gives someone hope.
I think there is something incredibly powerful about being able to see people who came before you and realize that there is a future beyond whatever you’re experiencing in the present. I want a young trans girl to be able to look at these photographs and see herself in someone—to see other kids like her, but also to look at the trans elders and understand that growing older, thriving, creating, loving, and experiencing the full range of life is possible.
I want her to know that she has a future worth imagining.
I hope someone decades from now can open that book or walk into that exhibition and see our humanity before anything else. I want them to see people who laughed together, got dressed together, fell in love, made art, built friendships, celebrated each other, grew older, and created beautiful lives. I hope they see a lineage, but also a promise. Preserve The Dolls isn’t just about documenting who we are right now. It’s also about making sure the people who come after us have something they can see themselves in.
So.Gay: There’s something very beautiful about documenting raw parts of someone’s life. Are there any parts of trans womanhood you want Preserve the Dolls to protect from being forgotten?
Jae: I want to protect the everyday parts of our lives. History tends to preserve the big moments. The protests, the political battles, the tragedies, the milestones. Those things matter, but they aren’t the entirety of a person’s life. I want to preserve the way we laugh together. The friendships we make. The clothes we wear. The way we get ready together. The way an elder can look at a younger trans woman and recognize something of herself. The little rituals of becoming comfortable in yourself. The ordinary days that don’t feel historically significant while you’re living them.
And more than anything, I want to protect our joy from being forgotten. There’s a tendency to document trans existence through struggle, because struggle is often what the outside world finds easiest to understand. But trans women have always experienced happiness, beauty, intimacy, creativity, humor, and community too.
That’s what I want Preserve The Dolls to hold onto.
