Paonia, Colorado, a town of about 1,500, is situated along the North Fork Valley in Delta County, the west-central area of Colorado. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows each other, and personal news travels fast.
16-year-old Apollo Rodriquez knows this well. Last May, Rodriquez came out as transgender. During that time, he also had a summer internship with a photographer. Part of the internship included working on a month-long photo project. Rodriquez chose to document the earliest days of his transition in a photo essay, which was recently published in High Country News.
Rodriquez joined Colorado Edition to talk about his project, the reflective nature of self-portraiture and coming out as trans in rural Colorado.
