“I love who I am and my soul, and it feels more and more like my outside is meeting that inside feeling,” says Russell, who was 24 and living in Madison, Wisconsin when he was photographed by Soraya Zaman for their new book, American Boys. The quote appears next to photos of his sandy mane blowing in the breeze by the water, then portraits of him posing by a statue of an angel, outside under a tree, and finally standing over the shoreline on a bundle of wood, shirtless and proudly displaying scars from his top surgery.

Russell is just one of nearly 30 people featured in American Boys, a project in which Zaman traveled coast to coast to chronicle a range of presentation of transmasculine identity across the U.S. In small towns and big cities alike, people sat for Zaman’s lens in the comfort of their environments: Elias in the light of his window, Shane crossing a Los Angeles street, Amari resting near train tracks, Aodhàn in a field of sunflowers, Steve climbing high onto rocks, and so many more.

Soraya Zaman

The book offers a window into an admittedly limited slice of American transmasculinity. As Zaman mentions, not everyone, some of their subjects included, has interest in or access to surgery and/or testosterone; for the purposes of the book the hormone is only mentioned to frame the passage of time, and to be honest about the fact that their subjects may look different now than when first photographed. “I do hope that if trans and non-binary people buy this book and can’t ‘see’ themselves in any of the images, that they can find shared experience in the stories,” Zaman said.

American Boys was the first extended personal project of Zaman’s photography career, one that has also included fashion and beauty photography for the likes of H&M, Public School New York, gender-fluid clothing line Collina Strada, and more. In their personal work, Zaman, who identifies as non-binary, has always been interested in exploring queer sexuality and gender; they hope that American Boys will be just one more opportunity to bring conversations about gender and sexuality to the fore through photography. them. spoke to Zaman about internalized ideas about boyhood, gender inclusivity, identity narratives, and more.