November 17th will leave you wondering: why should happiness demand a lot suffering? In her debut book of photography, Charley Dean Sayers, 23, documents her gender confirmation surgery, which she underwent three months after her 18th birthday.

The book spans Sayers’ five weeks in Chon Buri, Thailand. It’s a portal into an especially intimate period of Sayers’ life, and of mental and physical tumult. As I moved through the photographs, diary entries of Sayers and her mother, messages sent to friends, I often felt like more of an intruder than a reader. The nice irony is that much of the world feels otherwise: fully entitled to knowledge of trans people’s bodies. Have you ever had the surgery? Recovery must’ve been awful, right? How bad was it? Questions too often asked by people too unfamiliar.

Within the pressure to satisfy our sceptics, self-censorship becomes an intrinsic a part of being trans. We do it to cover until the time is true. We do it in order that medical practitioners consider us. We do it because we fear, on the smallest hint of doubt, those that support us will stop doing so. And so the story goes: HRT? I feel amazing! On daily basis is a complete fucking gift. I used to be trapped and now I’m free. I even have all the time been a woman. I even have all the time been a boy. My outsides finally match my insides. Slay, I suppose.

Sayers says no to self-censorship, to the crippling burden of hiding your pain. In doing so, she gets the primary and last word.

You went to Chon Buri with 4 cameras. I’m wondering why, at that moment, you selected to document those five weeks so closely?

Charley Dean Sayers: It was only a way of conceptualising my very own trauma before it even happened. I believe seeing it through a creative lens really helped me process it prior to now tense. I felt a combined sense of responsibility and delusion that the whole experience was a creative project.

I’d be laying within the hospital bed, and I’d have my dressing modified, but I’d be taking pictures of it, and in that way, it was almost like I used to be seeing the photographs three months in the long run after I developed the film. I used to be forcing myself into the headspace of pondering, ‘Oh, it will make a wonderful image.’

I suppose in that sense it made it easier to endure the trauma.

Charley Dean Sayers: Yeah, of course. If I took an image of it, then it wasn’t real. It was just a part of my project – it wasn’t something that was happening to me. My recovery occurred through the viewfinder, and this helped me find the nuance and wonder in suffering, and likewise made the 12 months of recovery rather more rewarding.

How does it feel to know that other people may have access to this incredibly intimate time of your life?

Charley Dean Sayers: I’m overwhelmed. I’m defining this experience alone terms completely, my suffering – I’ve transformed it right into a 200-page visual journey, and there’s no interference from any publishers, either.

I’m really excited for gender confirmation to not be such an enormous query mark to so many, but I’m really not serious about enlightening people concerning the specific processes throughout the surgery. I selected to talk about what felt relevant to me personally. It’s all about showing the emotional and physical turmoil that trans people should put themselves through so as to feel comfortable.

On defining the experience on your individual terms, is that why you selected to be the topic of your photography, for instance, fairly than documenting other people’s experiences with gender confirmation surgery?

Charley Dean Sayers: I believe when it’s your individual experience you’re not as delicate. While I used to be in Thailand, there have been quite a few other trans women that were receiving the very same treatments that I used to be, they usually were going through the method at the very same time. I’m sure if I might have asked them to be the topic of my photography, they’d have said yes, but I knew the photos could never capture the identical transparency. I didn’t care if I used to be nude, I didn’t care if there was blood, if I used to be crying, if I used to be in an awful mood. I still desired to take the image. I knew I might be mean to myself if I needed to be.

Has fraught access to trans healthcare within the UK shaped November seventeenth?

Charley Dean Sayers: Yes. I believe that’s why I discovered it so hard to release the book, and why I waited so long – I desired to do it right. Inside the period of me having this surgery and making the book, hormone blockers for young trans people within the UK have categorically been stripped away. It’s under no circumstances accessible. It was after I was that age. I felt as if I couldn’t show the actual struggle that I went through, because I felt as I needed to be glad about receiving the bare minimum, which was the hormone blockers.

The word regret and the concept of fixing your mind is thrown around a lot in regard to trans children. After I was having surgery, those were definitely thoughts that I used to be having, which made me feel guilty, but I believe it was only a natural thing to feel. I don’t have any regrets now, and I’ve never had any regrets concerning the hormone blockers, but I feel like while you’re trans, the word ‘regret’, and the concept of not being sure is nearly blasphemous, since you don’t need to regress any treatment’s availability for future generations. Accessibility to gender-affirming look after trans kids must be the bare minimum, but while you’re under 18, gender dysphoria is denied any credibility.

How did you get to a spot where you desired to be honest concerning the suffering you needed to endure to achieve happiness?

Charley Dean Sayers: I made six handmade drafts of the book after I graduated from CSM last 12 months. They appear very different to how the ultimate copies look, and that’s just purely because I used to be censoring myself in the primary draft. That just boils all the way down to, again, feeling such a weight on my shoulders to talk for the whole community, which I don’t think any single trans person should feel.

I didn’t want it to be received within the fallacious way, but I believe that may just occur regardless… so I could as well just be as honest and as truthful as I can try to be. The trans community is painted with one brush by the media, and everybody has a predefined idea of what it means to be trans, so I would as well bare all of it. It’s my story on my terms.

How is November seventeenth going to tell your future projects and art practice?

Charley Dean Sayers: Creating the book and being so honest has affected my work already. My recent work has been extremely frivolous. I made a project called ‘Big Head’, exploring the very idea of being my very own muse. I used to be printing out these humongous pictures of my head and my hands and was gluing them on top of my face to portray this sense of an inflated ego. I believe trans joy is such a vital thing to convey, and I believe humour is an incredible option to start.

Moving forward my work goes to be lots happier, because that’s the place I find myself in now, and I’m really joyful with where I’m in my life and my body. I need to point out a trans person existing and making the stuff they have the desire to make and my work not necessarily being about my gender identity. Every part’s informed by who you’re, but my work’s going to be lots more fun and lightweight moving on.

seventeenth November by Charley Dean Sayers launches on February 17 on the Photo Book Café in London.