Hong Kong photographer captures 4 years in transgender friend’s transition

When Hong Kong photographer Mark Woodward was working with United States special forces, the country’s military elite, taking photos of their work, he brought out pictures of a slight transgender woman back in New York.

In the photos, taken during her transition, Lia Romero stands watching the camera with her eyes wide open, wearing just a thin slip.

“The special forces troops said, ‘That is brave’,” Woodward recalls. “I take my hat off to that.”

SEE ALSO: No child should endure my ordeal, says sex-disorder Hongkonger forced to be a boy

In his first solo exhibition, which opened in Brooklyn on Friday, Woodward is exhibiting the series of photos he took over four years of his friend Romero’s physical and emotional transition from a man to a woman.

Woodward says he first met his friend, then named Antonio, when she was the resident adviser at his university dormitory.

“It was over the winter break, I think through social media, that she came out or I heard it through someone and very quickly after getting back we grabbed a coffee. I think it was pretty clear I was captivated, I was intrigued,” he says.

Born and educated in Hong Kong, where he attended West Island School, Woodward moved to New York to enrol in the Parsons School of Design.