Lindsay Perryman: TOPS

Tops

Lindsay Perryman
Palm* Studios

Tops is a considered examination of transmasculine experience, centred on vulnerability, care, and the often unseen structures that make transition possible. Originating as a short film and later expanded into book form, the project moves between stillness and intimacy, tracing the physical and emotional terrain of top surgery through images made before, during, and after filming.

Perryman’s photographs resist sensationalism, instead focusing on touch, proximity, and the shared labour of healing. Scarring appears not as spectacle but as a recurring marker of time, tenderness, and collective responsibility. Moments of caregiving, such as the application of gel to surgical scars, underscore the book’s emphasis on community as a sustaining force. In positioning personal experience within a broader framework of mutual support and archival necessity, Tops contributes to an ongoing visual record of transgender lives, foregrounding care as both subject and method.