Pia Paulina Guilmoth | Flowers Drink the River

“Flowers Drink the River” spans the first two years of Pia Paulina Guilmoth’s gender transition as she photographs her small community in rural Maine and the beauty and terror of living as a trans woman in a rural town. Scenes of moths and floating spider silk, mud-drenched bodies intertwining, a burning house, girlfriends pissing on each other from tree branches, nocturnal animals, and euphoric rituals adorn flash-soaked landscapes. Under the moon, the boundaries between people, animals, and the land soften and blur. “Flowers Drink the River” is an animistic search for beauty, resistance, safety, and magic in a world often devoid of these things. Pia finds beauty and belonging as she creates a utopia hidden just barely out of reach.