AT EASE
- Maisie Daniels
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
PHOTOGRAPHY PIP JAY KING - SUBJECT PHARRELL SPRINGER - WORDS CLAIRE MOUCHEMMORE
LAYERED was created in memory of Leia — a space to hold trans and non-binary creativity with care, intention, and time. It’s a place for stories that unfold slowly, that carry weight, and that deserve to be told with tenderness rather than urgency.
At Ease is one of those stories.
Photographed by Pip Jay King, a London-based, Welsh-born, working-class, non-binary photographer, this intimate portrait series documents the journey of Pip’s trans-masc friend Pharrell Springer before and after receiving top surgery — life-saving, gender-affirming care that came after a six-year wait. Shot in Pharrell’s council block in Bow, East London, the images are grounded in the everyday: home as refuge, as witness, as the place where change is first allowed to exist.
The series is layered in both time and feeling. Pre-surgery, Pharrell is photographed in the only space they felt comfortable being topless — their home — on the final day of a long and exhausting waiting period. Four weeks later, Pip returns to document recovery, healing, and the emergence of something lighter: scars on display, shoulders back, chest bare in public for the first time. What unfolds is a quiet but radical shift from dysphoria to euphoria, from holding oneself tightly to finally standing at ease.
Accompanied by words from Claire Mouchemore, and reflections from Pharrell themselves, At Ease centres the body not as something to be explained or justified, but as something lived in. The images don’t rush the moment — they honour it. They show how transition is not a single event, but a series of thresholds: before and after, inside and outside, fear and freedom.
For Pip, submitting this work to LAYERED felt instinctive — a chance to share a deeply personal, never-before-seen series within a space committed to trans visibility in visual culture. For us, it’s an honour to hold it here. At Ease is a reminder that becoming yourself is not only about change, but about finally arriving somewhere you can rest.
