Nat Raum

The Light Won't Find You | My queerness lives the strongest in the room inside my mind.

I found comfort in myself and in my own body for the first time in years when I began to question my gender. These images explore my changing relationship with my gender and sexuality following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the end of my most recent romantic relationship. They follow me through the process of healing, reflecting, and beginning to define my identity.

Creating these images is a form of escapism; in depicting my personal utopia, I distance myself from a reality in which I am largely closeted and often performing a version of femininity that was engrained in me as a result of past trauma. I strive for the images to feel vernacular, and as such, I am removing a lot of the technical precision I usually employ in my work. The experience of redefining my gender has been surreal and imperfect, and I aim to mirror that in the images I create. By creating hazy, dreamlike images, I depict the feeling of existing in this personal utopia. This includes a combination of imagery from locations including my bedroom, my childhood home, and my grandmother’s house, as well as the city in which I grew up and continue to reside. My relationship to place has always been strong; I am finally examining how places and people have shaped my identity. natraum.com