iO Tillett Wright

Photographer

As a child actor, iO Tillett Wright turned his shoes around in the bathroom stall so that people would think he was a boy. As a teenager, he fell in love with both women and men. His life in the gray areas of gender and sexuality deeply inform his work as an artist.

Why you should listen

iO Tillett Wright thanks his parents for not asking him to define himself as a child. His experience of growing up without having check boxes like “female,” “male,” “gay” or straight” thoroughly infuses his art.

iO’s photography can be seen regularly in two features in The New York Times: Notes from the Underground and The Lowdown. He is also the creator of Self Evident Truths—an ongoing project to document the wide variety of experiences in LGBTQ America. So far, he has photographed about 2,000 people for the project. His goal: 10,000 portraits and a nationwide rethinking of discriminatory laws.

iO had his first solo show at Fuse gallery in New York City in 2010, and exhibited his work at The Hole Gallery in early summer of 2012. He has published three books of photographs; Lose My Number, KISSER, and Look Ma’, No Hands. He has directed several music videos, and spent nineteen years acting in films.

What others say

Photographer iO Tillett Wright has shot everyone from Olivia Thirlby to Iggy Pop, but since 2010 she has focused her lens on average Americans, taking simple portraits of anyone who identifies as somewhere along the LGBTQ spectrum.
Elle Magazine