Louka Perderizet
Louka is a 22-year-old trans boy currently finishing his bachelor degree in photography at ESA 75 art school in Brussels. He has worked on multiple photographic series that are still an ongoing process. Like most of his work, Louka likes to pursue his series overtime and evolve with and through them.
“Garçon assigné fille à la naissance” (Boy assigned girl at birth) for instance, is a body of work he has been working on over the years, still adding new pictures from time to time. With the “Sugar Love Show” series he turned his gaze to ‘Sugar Love’, a 53 year old drag queen who has been doing drag for over thirty years. “I wanted to show different aspects of her life including her everyday life out of stage.”
Overtime Louka and Sugar Love build up a really strong bond and created the collective “House of Love”.
What inspired you to get into the arts and photography?
“Since childhood I was inspired by my maternal grandparents, who had an analog photo lab in their home. They gave me my first cameras - disposable cameras at first and then offered me a first digital camera. I used to spend my summer vacations with them. We developed my film rolls together. In the lab, there was a collection of photos of my mother and my birth and also other pictures of my childhood. Thus, since a very young age I dedicated a lot of my time to it when I was at their place. Later on, I started to take photos with a digital camera that I bought with my grandfather at a flea market. I cherished that camera so much that I kept it at least eight years. With it I started to take Urbex photos (abandoned places). When I discovered the tv series American Horror Stories, I started to do staged photography in a very similar vibe in Urbex places by myself mostly, and with acquaintances as my subjects. It was rough in style and I felt it was the best tool to express how I felt at the time.”
Louka’s biggest role models were and are still: Roger Ballen, Joël Peter Witkin, and Nan Goldin.
What is your creative process and what are the most important things you keep in mind when beginning a new project?
“It really pops out in my mind and I think a lot about my place in Society as a trans individual and I think a lot of my trans peers too. But for my series entitled « Cheese and wine » the process is a bit different in the sense that I take ideas from dreams and nightmares which I set up then as a staged picture.”
“Trans identities are an obvious recurring theme in my work. I’m working on an ongoing series at the moment which is called « Quest for recognition » (en quête de reconnaissance). This series is about trans love and sexuality. I’m currently looking for models.”
Interested? Contact Louka
What do you enjoy most about your work?
“It allows me to express myself and find a place through society and social injunctions. Through art, photography, and writing I can fully express myself as I am, as well as all my emotions and everything comes from the guts!”
Do you have any current/upcoming events?
“There will be an exhibition at ULB at the end of June 2022. There is also the exhibition on Identity at ‘The Agenda’ which is still ongoing until the end of June. This exhibition is organised by ‘Full of Love magazine’, which I’m the founder of together with Eli (co-founder). Our aim is to promote artists who are silenced into invisibility. We want to give them the chance to express themselves and show their work. We are also planing to make some short video interviews in which they can explain their series and their creative process. At some point, we’d like to have a real paper magazine. It’s to be continued. You can learn more about it during the interview on BX1 that will be published soon.”
