This DIY Zine Captures the Beauty of Queer Life in the South and Midwest

Carmen DeCristo grew up in Silk Hope, North Carolina, a town so small that her graduating class consisted of 36 people. As many queer people do, she came to New York City as an adult to become herself, diving headfirst into the city’s tight-knit trans and nightlife communities. But lately, the 24-year-old photographer has been roadtripping to rural areas in the South and the Midwest, much like the one from which she escaped.

Over the past year, DeCristo has been documenting her travels through her zine American Girl Doll, its name a trans-themed pun on the name of the popular children’s toy line. The images are an intimate portrayal of the DIY queer scenes DeCristo has encountered — from raves held in churches to soirées in smoke shops — and of the photographer’s own relationship to the concept of American girlhood. Conceptualized as a response to both last year’s flood of anti-trans legislation and to Instagram’s tendency to censor images of queer bodies, the project began with a volume that DeCristo printed and assembled by hand. To her surprise, the zine sold out within two hours of her posting about it on social media. For the three subsequent volumes, she found a printing press, and has been intermittently roadtripping across America since then, selling the zines for gas money to get to her next destination.

DeCristo insists on bringing me physical copies of the zines to flip through during our recent interview. Both of us might belong to the eldest class of Gen Z, born just as analog photography was giving way to digital, but there is something about holding a physical object that scrolling through an Instagram carousel can’t quite replicate. The photographer mostly sells copies of American Girl Doll at IRL events, but if you shoot her a DM on Instagram, she might just send you a copy on a sliding-scale price.

If not, DeCristo also provided Them with exclusive photos that didn’t make it into the physical copies of her zines. Below, the photographer discusses her inspirations, her commitment to making accessible art, and finding God again on a dance floor.

Can you tell me a little more about the title?

When I conceptualized this project, it was originally a trilogy, and each one had a different girl on the cover. And each volume delves into a different slice of my story as a trans woman, as an “American Girl Doll.”

I love the idea of reclaiming traditional and classic American things with trans people at the center of them to [produce] this idea of, “Look, we’ve always been here. This is as much an American Girl doll as Betsy…” I don’t know the doll’s names. I never actually had them. I have people come up to me, they’re like, “Oh, you like American Girl dolls?” I’m like, “No, I’ve never had one. I could never afford one.” That’s a bougie doll. I just made myself into one instead. That was the compromise.

Why was it important to you to highlight cities in the South and the Midwest?

We went to all these Southern states where the politics are not in favor of trans people right now. To go there and to see how people are organizing at the antithesis of the culture around them… I didn’t feel like I could do that [growing up in the South]. It gives me a lot of hope as a trans woman. I feel like that needs to be put in the spotlight.

No one cares about how they look or who they’re meeting. They care about how they look style-wise, but they’re not like, “Oh, I can’t dance. I’ll look stupid.” The people out there, they dance, honey. They understand how rare and precious the space and the scene is.

In this picture [Editor’s note: see above], they’ve taken over this rundown chapel in Louisville. And the two resident artists/bookers are trans. They were throwing this rave, and this old couple of local Louisville elders came in and just started praying in the chapel while all these kids were dancing up front.

So that’s another reason why I wanted to take it to these places, because I’m getting surreal imagery that I don’t think I could get here. These worlds that they’re building — this specific world that I’ve built through this photograph — is a direct consequence of how they’re organizing.

The zines consist of a mix of candid and staged photographs. How did you decide where to shoot, and how to compose each image?

I’m so blessed to have a great network of nightlife creatures throughout this country now, and through them, I’m able to find the spaces to go. So the snapshots are very much spur of the moment. But when I format the zines, I’m thinking about how the snapshots can be in communication with the staged photographs. As a photographer, I am a documentarian, but there’s a fine art essence to everything I do.

I wanted to figure out how to marry the two, because my snapshots and my staged photographs always felt like they were from the same voice, but I could never figure out how or why. Putting this project together and using every image as a storytelling device and being super particular about the formatting — that is where this meld of snapshot and posed photography comes from.

I also have a super romanticized view of life in general. I feel like it wouldn’t be true to me if I didn’t include some staged photographs, some heightened truths. Because that’s just how I navigate this world anyways.

In the description for some of the zines, you write that the project is also about your relationship to God. Can you say more about that?

I think God is this wonderful thing that we have in life that gives us faith and hope and all these substantial things. I think spiritual health is really important, especially for queer people who often get barred from spiritual practices and spaces. I think we’re really lucky that we have each other, and the ways we congregate and the ways we share ideas and community are still very spiritual to me. And through those things, I started to find God again.

I was raised with the idea that we all have God inside of us. As a trans woman who has kind of created myself, I think a lot about the divine power of creation, the fact that God’s in me, which gives me the permission to then create myself. My transition is as much of a spiritual thing as it is a physical and medical thing. At least, I’m lucky that it has been. I know that’s not the case for all trans people.

Through all four volumes, you’ll see these religious elements or these classical artistic elements that you’d find in religious artworks being used in subtle ways, like composition or symbolism. Part of that [is meant] to honor my upbringing as an Italian-American and as a Southerner. Part of it is to honor where I am now. And then part of it is to connect with an audience who may not be so into the whole trans side of things, but they’re like, “Oh, but this person is religious and holy.”

What’s next for you?

I’m still very much on the road, trying to get this across the country as far as possible. So far, I think I’ve sold over 200 copies in at least 15 states. To go from the work being on Instagram solely to it now being in a hundred plus homes across the country, that means so much more to me than my Instagram ever could.

This whole project has really given me a life’s purpose of, “OK, this is what I need to do right now. I need to document my siblings, document the community that they’re supporting, and then just share it. Just get it out there as much as possible.”

That’s why I sell it on a sliding scale, too. I try to keep this work as accessible as possible so anyone can get their hands on it. If someone comes up to me and they’re like, “I only have 20 [dollars].” I’m like, “Diva, take the art. Give me 20 because I got to eat later. But take the art.” It is not about the money. It’s about getting these stories out to people.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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