ABOUT

About the Author

Dean Kotula

Dean Kotula is a documentary photographer/writer who freelances and works on long-term projects. His work is both personal and political. He is particularly interested in civil rights, sustainable fisheries, the environment, labor, and animal protection.

Upon witnessing his first latent images appear in a tray of developer in his dad’s darkroom at the age of ten, he was hooked on photography. As a shy kid, he needed an excuse to engage with the world. Photography gave him purpose, while the camera gave him cover:

“The camera was and remains my entrée to the world. It once doubled as a shield I could hide behind until I grew confident. As a steady companion for over four decades, my photographs are diaristic in nature, with themes being the chapter headings in the story of my life.”

From 1985 to 1990, Dean was employed by the National Marine Fisheries Service as an observer aboard foreign fishing vessels harvesting fish in U.S. waters. He photographed with zeal, understanding that garnering this rare access was a privilege. Little did he know, these would also be the final years that foreign nations were permitted to fish in U.S. territorial waters so these images also serve as documents depicting a significant turning point in the history of U.S. fisheries.

Dean’s pioneering effort and ground-breaking book, The Phallus Palace: Female-to-male Transsexuals (Alyson,2002), features not only portraits but three separate series of photographs he took in various operating rooms, which detail, from start to finish, all sex reassignment procedures available to the FTM at that time. These were the first FTM surgical photographs ever published. They allowed the public to glimpse, for the very first time, the complex and excruciatingly painful bodily transformation a segment of this population undergoes to actualize their identities. Dean spearheaded this project amid his own struggle to transition since he knew first-hand how vital knowledge was to the process.

With the catastrophic effects of climate change being seen around the world, Dean responded to the adage, “Not in my backyard!” in one of his most recent portfolios, Taken By Storm, where he highlights some of the damage and losses sustained in his immediate area in the state of Maine on the Schoodic Peninsula due to January 2024’s back-to-back storms.

Dean Kotula has won numerous awards, garnered various grants, and exhibited widely. He has lectured on photography and has had his work published in books, magazines, and newspapers. He owns a commercial gallery on the coast of Maine, where he exhibits his work on a seasonal basis.

He is currently writing a memoir.