After receiving his BFA from Otis-Parsons Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1984, Hunter Reynolds moved across the country to New York’s East Village. He settled into new digs on Eighth Street, sharing a flat with Aldo Hernandez, a DJ at the Pyramid Club and a fixture on the downtown underground scene that catapulted a new generation of politically-conscious drag performers like RuPaul, Lady Bunny, and Lypsinka into the spotlight.
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Inspired by their radical aesthetics, Reynolds instinctively knew that he wanted to take drag out of this context and explore it in his own way. “I started by removing my beard and putting make up on to transform into a feminine look. But not totally drag. I wanted to show my chest hair – [the] third gender is what I called it,” Reynolds tells Another Man on a break from installing Drag to Dervish, a retrospective exhibition chronicling the life of his alter ego, Patina du Prey.
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Reynolds’ journey into gender-bending began in 1989 when he partnered with photographer Michael Wakefield for a private performance documenting the transformation process on film. “Three days later I got the pictures back and realised, ‘Oh my God!’” Reynolds remembers. “I confronted myself with my own identity. I threw them into a drawer and didn’t look at them for several months.”
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