The Main Event

Book, Inkjet Printing, 2025

My first encounter with drag happened by chance and far from home - at a Thai cabaret show on the island of Koh Samui. Sitting in the audience, I felt as though I had stepped into a parallel universe: dazzling, flamboyant, colorful, unapologetic. The tension between the rich, grotesque aesthetics and the modesty of the setting ignited a deep, perhaps painful, question within me:

 Who are the people behind these characters? What remains when the performance ends, and the spotlight fades?

I knew then that I wanted to embark on a journey - one that would pierce through the surface of makeup and wigs, beyond costume and spectacle, into the cracks, connections, and complex identities that lie beneath.

Two years later, thanks to my camera, I was granted the opportunity to step into the drag queen community in Israel. I entered with care, humility, and deep respect for a culture I was only beginning to understand. I started by documenting performances onstage, then backstage, and gradually - through glances, touch, conversation, and silence - I was welcomed into private homes and, more profoundly, into inner worlds.

What began as a visual inquiry evolved into a deeply personal journey. The queens who opened their lives to me did not just allow me to document - they invited me to participate. Within the space formed between lens and intimacy, I discovered that, like the figures onstage, I too was undergoing a process of formation - of choice, of self-invention, of liberation.

Through the camera, I learned what self-love looks like, what existential courage feels like, and what it means to belong to a community that embraces you precisely as you are. Drag revealed itself not merely as a visual performance but as a gesture of resistance and a manifesto of hope - a performative theatre of identity, a radical space in which alternative ways of being are imagined and embodied.

In every layer of makeup, every movement, every song, I encountered a testimony to identities asserting their right to exist - through beauty, through joy, and through vulnerability.

I am profoundly grateful for the privilege of being present, of witnessing, listening, and turning my gaze into a vessel for storytelling.

To the beloved queens: Yosale Ziv, Brandi Gin, Itai Bar, and Loei Fuller - thank you for opening your doors to me, and above all, your hearts.

And to all the others who walked with me on this journey: Suzi Boum, Glory Hollywood, Patrisha Lee, Tomer Romn, Dylan, Kay Long, Katrina, Céline La Divine, Regina Licious, Genderika, D-Aliza, Joanna Russ, Regina Geonge, Zohar Knowles, and Tequila Coaster - 

Thank you for your trust, for the moments we shared, and for allowing me to feel truly at home.