Geena Rocero on Her Blockbuster Memoir and Trans Liberation
By Photography by The way Geena Rocero stares down a camera is captivating. Here, at in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, she challenges its gaze with the kind of merciless confidence that comes only after nearly two decades of modeling.
With each click, the elegant frame of her face tilts, her lithe limbs flick, and her eyes steady on the target. Then, as soon as photographer Agata Serge breaks to take stock of the images gathered, Rocero comes back down to the mortal realm to be with the rest of us.“It’s about little movements,” says Rocero, who is—when she’s not in front of the camera—also a transgender rights advocate and film producer.If I had just walked in, I might’ve thought , 40, was simply a muse at the center of “,” the current exhibition featuring noted Filipino American artists Leo Valledor and Carlos Villa.
But nothing about Rocero is passive. In fact, it was she who adamantly requested New York’s first-ever Filipino-owned gallery as the site for this shoot because, for her, intentionality is key.This year Rocero released her groundbreaking memoir, .
The book recounts her rise from pageant queen in the Philippines to a laudable career in fashion and advocacy in the United States.
