Elle Pérez (born 1989) is an American photographer whose work explores gender identity, intimacy, vulnerability, and the relationship between seeing and love.
[1] In 2002, at the age of twelve, Pérez began photographing the Bronx punk community that they were a part of, creating an archive of the people that shaped these peripheral, alternative, and genderqueer spaces.
"[12] While a graduate student at Yale in 2015 they began a series titled "Raw," photographs of the Black and Latino wrestlers of the Bronx underground wrestling scene.
[13] In an interview with The Fader about this series they state, "I think wrestling is important for people in my community who are denied certain types of identities and can't be anyone they want in the "real" world.
"[13][1] As expressed in MoMA PS1's press release, on the occasion of the artist's first museum solo exhibition, Diablo, "Pérez's photographs distill moments of intimacy and emotional exchange: a bloody hand resting between parted legs; the scar gracing a bare chest; twinned rocks nestled against an outcropping; a friend's face grazed by sunlight.