Raven Ellaine
Portland Photographer/Videographer
she/her
Raven Ellaine has many talents. She’s an artist, a photographer, videographer, public speaker, makeup artist and organizer. Her visual art and portraiture is often sensual — full of movement, and expression. And she’s dabbled in political ads. Before November’s election, Ellaine was asked by a person involved with then-Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s campaign to help film a short piece about Eudaly.
But she said people, including in Portland, don’t always see her as the multi-faceted woman she is and, instead of getting to know her as a whole person, put her in a category.
“Being a trans woman means being put in a bubble. It means people putting limitations on what you can do, especially as a trans woman of color,” she said. She described the message she receives, at times overly loud and overly clear, as, “I will never amount to the same things as a cisgender person.”
But Ellaine knows that’s not true. “I’ve done many things a lot of cisgender people would never touch on. At this point, I just keep going, I push through, I say, ‘Anything is possible.’ I’m not going to give up because I’ve gotten too far.”
Ellaine said that the most important thing allies can do is to treat transgender people like human beings. And to make transgender people feel visible.
“Visibility means being understood for who I am, not what I am. Because I’m Black and trans, people disregard me sometimes. They don’t take the time to get to know me at all. My work and what I do in my everyday life and what I create shows you that there’s so much more to me than what just meets the eye and what people expect,” she said.