The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art has opened contemporary photographer Jess T. Dugan's I want you to know my story, on view in the Keith D. Monda Gallery of Contemporary Art through Feb. 25, 2025.

The solo exhibition includes new photographs from Dugan's ongoing series Look at me like you love me, which consists of portraits, self-portraits and still lifes. Dugan’s use of rich textures, vivid colors and dramatic lighting evoke a feeling of the Baroque and grants their interior scenes a powerful sense of intimacy. When Covid restrictions pushed Dugan to work outdoors, the artist took their subjects into the landscape to create poignant scenes bathed in the ephemeral “golden hour” light at sunset. 

“My photographs function as an extended, oblique self-portrait as much as a catalogue of friends and loved ones,” says Dugan, who notes that the series of work in this exhibition “brings our attention to one of the most powerful and complex forms of intimacy—that of seeing and being seen.”

Grounded in their own experience as a queer, nonbinary person, Dugan’s work offers a reflection on the universal human need to express oneself and connect with others, and the ways our identities are shaped by experiences of intimacy, desire and companionship. 

The exhibition also features two videos: Letter to My Father and Letter to My Daughter. They consist of autobiographical monologues by the artist that reflect on the struggles and discoveries of being a gender non-conforming person, both as a child and now as a parent.  

“Together, these works meditate on the intensity of the relationship between child and parent,” says Christopher Jones, The Ringling's Stanton B. and Nancy W. Kaplan curator of photography and media arts, who notes that “the exhibition will resonate broadly with anyone who has navigated similar complex family relationships.” 

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