For the past five years, Norwegian artist Fin Serck-Hanssen has followed and documented the gender affirmation journey of his close friend Hedda, who, from her twenties onwards, travelled from Oslo to Buenos Aires and Bangkok to undergo cosmetic surgery and vaginoplasty.
Serck-Hanssen and Hedda’s images are created collaboratively to construct a complex portrait of the physical and psychological changes taking place in the life of a young person, offering an unflinching account of the realities of Hedda’s gender affirmation, surgeries, and recovery. Hedda reflects on the construction of identity in the 21st century, combining her selfies and the curation of an online identity with Serck-Hanssen’s tender yet direct portrayal of her most vulnerable moments. The book also reveals traces of this evolving identity: dark, almost imperceptible images, heavily overprinted with black ink, evoke photographs that Hedda chose not to reveal of herself. Hedda concludes with a short immersive work of fiction by novelist Genevieve Hudson, exploring ideas of ambiguity, transition, and change.