From an Aesthetica Magazine interview with Jess T. Dugan:
In hindsight, I always had an interest in photography. I asked for my first camera when I was 11 and photographed everything important to me as a young person: my friends, my teachers, my pets, my home. I wasn’t formally introduced to photography until I was 16, during my last year of high school. I knew immediately that I had found my medium, that my artistic voice was the strongest through photography, which allowed me to engage intimately with myself and with those around me. My earliest serious photographs were of my friends and loved ones in the LGBTQ+ community in Boston, where I came of age. Although my work has evolved and my skills have deepened, my core line of inquiry—how we come to know ourselves and how we engage with others on an intimate level—has always been the same.