Northern Lights, Northern Lives: A Spectrum of Gender Across Alaska and the Yukon is a collection of 50 striking photographs of LGBTQ+ people and their allies that is set in the breathtaking landscapes of Alaska and Yukon. The images are accompanied by personal essays from each of the subjects about their queer experiences as well as some of Norfolk based author/photographer Jayme Sojourn Drew’s own tales and reflections from their two-year road trip across the region.
It all started with a road trip to and from Norfolk, VA (where Drew lives) to Alaska in 2022. Drew had just left their job in healthcare due to burnout and decided to spend a season working as a park ranger in Alaska. Drew immediately fell in love with their new situation.
“I was living in a very politically red town and working for US Fish and Wildlife. It was the most incredibly affirming environment I think I had ever been in my adult work life.”
They had not expected the experience to be so much different than their work in healthcare.
“I was surprised because healthcare was a really sharp contrast to that, which I don’t think a lot of people expect. But transphobia and homophobia are really engrained in our healthcare system in really subtle ways and I didn’t really pick up on that. I wasn’t able to verbalize that when I was in healthcare.”
It was on the long solo ride back that Drew realized how much the experience had shaped them. Drew, who identifies as transgender and gender fluid, struggled with their gender identity, feeling as though every label didn’t fully fit them and often felt it hard to understand or communicate these feelings.
“On my drive back from Alaska to VA that year I was brainstorming in a bubble, by myself in the middle of Yukon. It takes a really really long time to get through Alaska and the Yukon. I hadn’t talked to anyone else for days and days and I had no cell phone reception, no internet. Just enjoying the road by myself,” they recall.
“I am just kind of dwelling on why the hell can’t we have good conversations about gender. And I am dwelling on life. I’d been estranged from my family for years because of my queer identities. Well, how easy would it be to just photograph people on the road and talk to them about their gender.”
After the initial trip they went back twice to work specifically on the project. Drew ended up driving 20,000 miles and flying 10,000 (their car wasn’t able to make the drive the 2nd trip). Over the course of both trips they met with over 200 people to photograph and collect their stories. The result became the All the Genders Photo Project.
The book Northern Lights, Northern Lives focuses on 50 of those stories from Alaska and Yukon, the region that inspired the entire project from the people to the land itself.
Drew discusses the importance of the stories of the Alaskan Natives featured.
“In this book Alaskan Native perspectives are a really huge part of people’s gendered experiences.”
They go on to say that although those voices are not the majority of stories in the book, the culture and their history seemed to have had an impact on all of the stories.
“Of the 50 stories, I would say about maybe 10-11 are from Alaskan Natives and they tie that aspect of themselves into their gender. But with everyone I talked to across that region, I think that culture and that long history of gender really was at the foundation of how people approached their own queerness.”
The subjects were found through social media, working with local LGBTQ+ nonprofits, and word of mouth, often paying for Instagram ads targeting towns on their travel route.
One story that stands out to them came via Instagram. They had been looking for the hashtag #queertrucker and came across the profile of a male identifying queer trucker who drove the northernmost routes north of the Arctic Circle.
“I was looking for folks who were more masculine presenting and were open to talking about their gender and were in more traditionally masculine industries because that has been the minority of folks in this project and I think there is a reason for that. Because a lot of people don’t necessarily feel safe being out in their industries.”
“I was debating if I should contact them and I put out one of my Instagram ads for Alaska and Yukon. I was in Vancouver in British Columbia at the time. And he reached out to me and was like ‘hey I am actually going to be in the Yukon. I am running some routes from Alaska down through the Yukon.’ And I was like ‘well how about that’. I really wanted to meet this person.”
Drew had to travel 1500 miles from the last town in British Columbia to the next city in the Yukon with very little phone service.
“We corresponded when we had those little bits of cell phone reception to see if we could make our routes coincide. Because he had a really rigid schedule but was really open to meeting with me and sharing his story.”
“He’s also a very eloquent writer, he was very articulate when it came to talking about parts of his gender that a lot of people really struggle to talk about and put into words.”
“So, I ended up meeting Troy at a gas station in a tiny tiny little town, like truly the middle of nowhere in the Yukon, and just had such a great conversation.”
Drew photographed him sitting in a road at the base of Canada’s highest mountain range and felt the backdrop was indicative of his story.
“It really fit what he relayed through a lot of his journey which was really like feeling at home in his body, like the way he expresses himself through makeup and really enjoying painting his nails. But also at the same time being in this very masculine industry and truly having a passion for the particular segment of heavy trucking that he works in and legitimately enjoying all the people around him even though he is somewhat closeted in his job because of safety concerns.”
Even though he was somewhat closeted on the job he told a story about how he is not alone out there on the road.
“He was describing going north of the Arctic on one of his regular routes and he has a rainbow tattoo on his forearm and met someone else that was queer coding in that area working in the same industry and just kind of rolled the sleeve up and showed the rainbows and gave each other a quiet nod like you know that you have company on the road.”
Drew hopes stories like these help others know they also have some “company on the road”.
As they state in the book, “the intent behind starting this project was NOT to help myself; the intent was to add something of value to the world around me, to help other people find and create more colorful boxes that were unique to them.”
Of course even though the main objective was to reach others they realized it had also been for them.
“I would soon learn that I did start this project to help myself though. I just didn’t know it right away. The first several months of this project helped me more fully embrace using the label transgender and even pursue gender affirming care that was right for me. These actions of self-love quietly blossomed through seeing myself reflected in a whole rainbow of conversations and snapshots that came through my camera lens.“
With LGBTQ+ rights increasingly under attack by the Trump regime, Drew is hoping this book will help start healthy conversations about gender identity.
Since Northern Lights, Northern Lives is 100% self-published, they need YOUR help. If you would like to support getting these stories out there then head over to the Kickstarter (June 1st-30th). Incentives range from signed copies of the book, sponsoring a small bundle of discount books to be sent to indie book stores (so the book can get seen), to a personal gender affirming photoshoot.
Let’s get these faces seen and these stories heard.
Main photo: “The ice doesn’t care who I love or how others perceive me, it just is. And it is beautiful.” – Kelby, a nonbinary glacier guide in SouthEast Alaska. Photo taken May 2023
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