Lucy Sante: "I tried to be a man, yes, but the truth is that I was never very good at it"

A decade has passed since Lucy Sante received EL PAÍS.

Both the journalist and the photographer were the same as now.

The reason, on that occasion, was the appearance of the first of her books that was translated into Spanish,

culture

.

The meeting took place then, as well as now, at his home in Kingston, the former capital of the State of New York, where Sante had established his permanent residence because he considered that the city where he had spent most of his life and from which he traced the portrait in

(1991) had died.

The book, an extraordinary urban chronicle, was not published in Spanish until 25 years later.

Other essential titles in his bibliography are

(1992), a chilling report on the history of crimes perpetrated in New York between 1914 and 1918, based on photographic evidence taken directly from the city's police archives, and

(1998) .

), autobiographical meditation on the difficulty of setting the limits that define our identity.

In 2015 she published

, alternative history of the French capital, which follows the model of work that he used in the book dedicated to New York.

The chronicles, profiles and essays of Sante, who for decades taught courses in creative writing and history of photography at the prestigious Bard College, on the banks of the Hudson, are on a par with those of authors of the caliber of Janet Malcolm or Joan Didion.

It has just appeared in our country

, its most recent title, a collection of 51 writings on cinema, photography, poetry, music, personal memory and stories of New York published in some of the most prestigious American magazines throughout the two last decades.

With a translation by María Luisa Seisdedos, it is published by Libros del KO, from

its first and only publishing house in Spanish.

In her new work, Sante profiles characters as diverse as filmmaker Jacques Rivette, Sophie Calle, Patti Smith, Rene Ricard, HP Lovecraft, Georges Simenon;

acclaimed or forgotten photographers like David Wojnarowicz or the mysterious Weegee, chronicler of a little-known New York.

The book also talks about today's cult writers who once enjoyed success, such as Richard Stark, or surprisingly modern graphic novelists, such as Lynd Ward.

In one of its sections, Underground Portrait recovers the era of Manhattan clubs like CBGB, The Mob, Palladium, or Fillmore East;

the story of bands like the Ramones or the Beastie Boys, along with many others that shaped a city in which, according to the author, “everything that is of interest is somehow related to music”.

Lucy Sante, at her home in Kingston (New York).Pascal Perich

Lucy Sante, who will turn 68 on May 25, was born in the town of Verviers, Belgium.

Her father was a metal worker, and her mother, a housewife with strong Catholic convictions, was one of her greatest influences during her childhood.

At birth he was registered as male and given the name Luc, masculinizing that of his older sister, Luce Marie, who was stillborn.

The first memories he has of his mother are the affectionately feminine terms with which she spoke to him, as well as the colors he chose for her clothes, associated with the figure of the Virgin Mary.

The history of Sante emigration to the United States was checkered.

Luc was four years old the first time the family crossed the Atlantic.

The situation changed sign in his native Belgium;

the company his father worked for seemed to recover and the family returned to old Europe, but it was a mirage.

Shortly after they emigrated for the second time, when his personality had not yet been forged in the new language, which he did not know at all.

From the industrial belt of New Jersey, Luc Sante went to New York, where he studied at a prestigious high school, and from there he went to Columbia University, where he enjoyed the friendship of Jim Jarmusch, which he still maintains, and treated personalities like Allen Ginsberg and Kenneth Koch.

This interview takes place in the kitchen of his house.

On the table there is an English copy of his latest book, on the cover of which, unlike the later Spanish version, Luc's name still appears.

A few weeks ago, a long essay appeared in

magazine in which Sante explained the reasons why, at almost 70 years old, she decided to change her sex.

I ask you to comment on it.

“In the middle of February of last year I bought a new phone and I decided to try an application called FaceApp that allows you to make changes to your image, such as looking younger or older, or changing gender.

It wasn't the first time he had done such a thing.

He had done it with less sophisticated mobiles, and always destroyed or hid the images he saw, but this time it was different.

The images were of great quality and I experienced a real shock.

I immediately went through the app with all the pictures of myself I could find from when I was 12 years old or even younger and suddenly I saw in front of me an alternative version of my life, my life as a woman.

I understood that I could not deny or ignore such a thing and that opened a door in the depths of my being and everything overflowed.

It was very fast,

like an earthquake that started a process of transformation that lasted about six months, maybe more, from the revelation I had in February.

I told it little by little, first to the people closest to me, such as my partner, my son, my therapist or my closest friends.

Then I told more and more people, my university colleagues, other friends, until finally, in September, I made it public on Instagram.

During all this time I was in a continuous state of exaltation in which everything fell into place.

I didn't have a single moment of doubt, not one, because what suddenly surfaced was something that had been on my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

from the revelation I had in February.

I told it little by little, first to the people closest to me, such as my partner, my son, my therapist or my closest friends.

Then I told more and more people, my university colleagues, other friends, until finally, in September, I made it public on Instagram.

During all this time I was in a continuous state of exaltation in which everything fell into place.

I didn't have a single moment of doubt, not one, because what suddenly surfaced was something that had been on my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

from the revelation I had in February.

I told it little by little, first to the people closest to me, such as my partner, my son, my therapist or my closest friends.

Then I told more and more people, my university colleagues, other friends, until finally, in September, I made it public on Instagram.

During all this time I was in a continuous state of exaltation in which everything fell into place.

I didn't have a single moment of doubt, not one, because what suddenly surfaced was something that had been on my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

my therapist or my closest friends.

Then I told more and more people, my university colleagues, other friends, until finally, in September, I made it public on Instagram.

During all this time I was in a continuous state of exaltation in which everything fell into place.

I didn't have a single moment of doubt, not one, because what suddenly surfaced was something that had been on my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

my therapist or my closest friends.

Then I told more and more people, my university colleagues, other friends, until finally, in September, I made it public on Instagram.

During all this time I was in a continuous state of exaltation in which everything fell into place.

I didn't have a single moment of doubt, not one, because what suddenly surfaced was something that had been on my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

because what suddenly came out was something that had been in my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

because what suddenly came out was something that had been in my mind since childhood.

I had always refused to see it, but once I started I had no choice but to follow through to the end."

Lucy Sante, artist, writer and chronicler at her home in Kingston. Pascal Perich

Sante pauses and pats the cover of the book.

She picks up a pen, opens the volume, and delicately crosses out Luc's name with a single stroke.

The essays that make up

they are a summary of the interests you have had throughout your life.

He does not say so, but it should be noted that they also contain the most intimate keys to his writing.

“I am interested in what is little known”, he affirms, turning the volume over to hide its cover, “what has been forgotten, what, when rescued, is revealed as entirely new, what is free of clichés. and stereotypes.

Real art doesn't pass.

It doesn't matter what time he lived.

Any artist or writer I admire is my contemporary, someone I can learn from, and if critics and academics haven't touched them, they are even more alive to me."

They are words equally applicable to musicians, plastic artists or writers whose profiles he traces in his writings, although they may have even greater relevance in the case of photographers erased by the passage of time.

“For almost 25 years I taught the history of photography at Bard College.

In addition to the essential figures of Walker Evans and Robert Frank, I am interested in the work of Eugène Atget, Berenice Abbott, Brassaï, Saul Leiter..., but above all I am attracted to little or nothing known photographers, even anonymous, from the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, whose work is both very clear and very mysterious,” he says.

Clear and mysterious at the same time.

The formula perfectly reflects Sante's handwriting.

His way of operating constitutes a kind of archeology of the invisible that imprints a very particular stamp on what he writes and consists of discovering unusual connections, such as those that, in his opinion, sometimes occur between times and places.

It's what he did in his books on Paris and New York.

“I am passionate about a certain type of space-time conjunctions”, he comments somewhat enigmatically and recites: “Valparaíso, 1952;

Dar es Salaam, 1966;

Brooklyn, 1933;

Tokyo, 1905. And if I have the right research tools, and I can incorporate randomly found references, such as photographs, newspapers, theater programs, train schedules, telephone directories, then I can insert myself into that world and write about it” .

Without a doubt, the most moving essay Lucy Sante has ever written is the self-portrait as a transgender that she published in Vanity Fair.

The story is overwhelming, and the style of a cleanliness and clarity that we know from the other pieces of it.

Nothing in her confession underscores it, but the possibility exists.

Could the radical turnaround that her life has just given have repercussions on the intellectual plane?

“The change that I have experienced is so deep that I am still processing it and I am not yet in a position to calibrate it.

Something that has completely changed is my way of relating to people.

I have become a much more sociable person.

I no longer have anything to hide and that is a huge release.

I was living with a secret that drowned me without my realizing it.

When I see photos of myself from before, I realize that I was not happy.

That has disappeared.

I am an open person.

I have not seen any change in my intellectual process but emotionally yes, and that will inevitably be seen.

It will probably be more difficult for me to watch than for other people, but it is interesting.

Will it change my way of writing?

I am very curious to know what could happen in that sense.

At no point in the conversation does Sante refer to anyone by name, although she speaks with particular emphasis on the way those closest to her reacted when she told them of the decision she had made, particularly her partner and her son.

“I was mentally prepared to deal with people stopping talking to me, but none of that has happened.

She expected to receive hostile mail.

It has not been.

Everyone has been extraordinarily kind and positive.

When I told it at the university, I received expressions of affection and support from both my colleagues and my students.

The hardest part was telling my partner.

She was the first to know.

I shared this house with her and we went through the pandemic together.

We are still very good friends, but the romance, which had lasted 15 years, could not survive.

I was devastated, but I had to listen to the truth.

My son took it naturally.

At first he was surprised, of course, but he belongs to a generation that has been in contact with young transsexuals since the age of 12.

He is part of his world, of his games,

of their life.

What interested him most was knowing what he had to call me.

I told him I was still his father.

It seemed weird to him at first, but now he feels comfortable with the idea.”

As far as his daily life is concerned, nothing has changed.

His daily routine remains the same.

She takes long walks near the Hudson River, reads, writes, and prepares a trip to Europe, during which he will pass through Spain to present his book.

The biggest change is the intense friendship he has forged with a transsexual girl who studied photography at Bard, 47 years her junior.

Lucy speaks of her new friend with immense affection, although she carefully avoids naming her.

What she has been living for a year she reminds him, she insistently explains, what happened to her when she left Belgium forever and had to immerse herself in a new culture and learn a new language.

She too, she points out, in the situation she now finds herself in, there are areas that she does not know how to define, spaces surrounded by an aura of uncertainty.

“No one knows much about gender dysphoria,” he points out.

"It's all speculation.

Part of the process is taking a look back at your life through a new lens that allows you to review everything from a perspective that didn't exist before.

And looking back I realize that I have never been a man.

I tried, yes, but the truth is that I was not very good at it.

For me, being a man meant having to draw an invisible circle around myself, a circle that no one could enter.

He sought to be unknowable.

I didn't want to be harsh or cold or distant, but I also didn't want anyone to get too close or get too deep into me, until I had this revelation.

Then everything changed.

Over the years, trying to understand what was wrong with me, there were times when I thought it was all a matter of fetishism.

Sometimes I thought I was a transvestite, which is something that didn't seem healthy to me.

On the other hand I am attracted to women.

I have never been attracted to men.

That was another reason why I thought I couldn't be trans, because I'm not attracted to men.

But all these mysteries around who I was and how I behaved were suddenly explained by the revelation I had when I found out that I am a woman.

When asked to talk about the projects he has in hand, his eyes light up: “I have many.

One of them, inevitably, is that I am going to write my memoirs as a transsexual.

I started to write a book about Lou Reed, but have decided to expand it and tell the story of The Velvet Underground, with the New York of the sixties as a background.

It is one of the most fascinating periods in the history of the city, and there is hardly anything written about it.

I am also writing the script for a television series, a documentary about the clubs of my youth.

I write the script and I also have to narrate it.

It is very interesting.

I've started hormone treatment, that's all for now, I'm not considering surgery, but my voice hasn't changed.

My voice has to tell a different story from the one told by the images or the interviewees.

It's like writing a poem for television and reciting it myself.

It is perfect".

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