In photos: 14 years of artist Love Bailey’s life and transition

Where some pho­tog­ra­phers heli­copter in for a sto­ry, Nick Haymes plays the long game, build­ing rela­tion­ships that span years, some­times decades, trac­ing the long arc of his­to­ry as it unfolds in real time. 

In the final pages of his 2012 mono­graph, GABEtm, which saw him fol­low and pho­to­graph actor Gabe Nevins, Haymes took a pic­ture of Love Bai­ley for the first time, the Cal­i­for­nia native play­ing a crit­i­cal role in help­ing to save the book’s pro­tag­o­nist from crash­ing out. ​“Bai­ley knew where the kids hus­tle in LA,” Haymes says. ​“She was the one who found Gabe and got him off the streets. We con­nect­ed when he went back home at the end.” 

From that aus­pi­cious begin­ning, Haymes and Bai­ley forged a bond born of com­fort and care – of see­ing and being seen as acts of courage, strength, and devo­tion. With the May 15 launch of Danc­ing on the Fault Line (Kodo­ji Press) at the LA Art Book Fair, Haymes brings us inside Bailey’s world, chron­i­cling her jour­ney as an artist and trans woman over the past 14 years. ​“Bai­ley is more than a muse, she is a friend,” says Haymes. ​“We keep com­ing back togeth­er because it becomes some­thing more than just the photographs.”

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Born to a migrant father who fled the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and an incar­cer­at­ed moth­er who sur­vived the USA’s 20^th cen­tu­ry war on drugs, Bai­ley was raised by her mater­nal grand­par­ents – Colonel and Bet­ty Bai­ley. Her grand­moth­er was a for­mer Rock­ette and sea­soned show­girl, and through her Bai­ley dis­cov­ered the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of glam­our, per­for­mance, and the­atre as a young child. 

Grow­ing up in the sub­urbs of San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, Bai­ley was the only boy on the all-girl dance squad before launch­ing her Bai­ley X col­lec­tion, which includ­ed a raunchy pho­to­shoot of the squad girls and boy jocks tak­ing ​“sug­ges­tive” pos­es. But after the images were left as a screen­saver at the school’s com­put­er lab, the admin­is­tra­tion banned her from attend­ing the prom. ​“It was my first real serv­ing of con­tro­ver­sy and rebel­lion, and it tast­ed sweet. I’d struck a nerve, and I craved more,” Bai­ley writes in the book. ​“From that moment on a new way of life crys­tallised for me. It was sink or swim.” 

Haymes remem­bers see­ing those ear­ly pho­tographs and being intrigued by a char­ac­ter so daz­zling, she prac­ti­cal­ly leapt off the page. ​“Bai­ley is every­thing I am not,” Haymes says. ​“I sit behind the cam­era, so I am a lit­tle qui­eter. That’s not who she is. She didn’t give a damn what oth­er peo­ple thought. She is total­ly free, the spir­it I imag­ined Cal­i­for­nia to be: out­go­ing, gre­gar­i­ous, fun, and carefree.” 

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For Haymes, the por­trait is a study that can only be seen in full, through the kalei­do­scop­ic shim­mer of time cap­tured in thou­sands of pho­tographs made year in, year out. ​“Time is the most pre­cious thing there is to any­one who’s alive,” he says. ​“I can’t just jump in some­where fast, extract some­thing, and draw con­clu­sions. You have to give peo­ple space to breathe.”

Fol­low­ing the nat­ur­al pace of life, Danc­ing on the Fault Line unfolds like a film, a por­trait of the artist as a trans woman in dis­cov­ery of her­self, push­ing the bound­aries of pos­si­bil­i­ty that is the very hall­mark of youth. ​“I’ve been called every name imag­in­able and have been knocked down more times than I care to count,” Bai­ley writes. ​“But I always get back up, often in high­er heels. Cracked, but nev­er broken.” 

• Read next: How trans rights activism and sex work­ers’ sol­i­dar­i­ty emerged in the ​’70s and ​’80s

“I’m Love Bai­ley. I’m a force of nature, a glitch in your sys­tem,” she con­tin­ues. ​“When the world tried to cage me, I built my own spec­tac­u­lar god­damn cir­cus. The road ahead is uncer­tain, marked with both new oppor­tu­ni­ties and fresh obsta­cles. But I’m equipped and ready for what­ev­er comes next.” 

Danc­ing on the Fault Line by Nick Haymes launch­es at the LA Art Book Fair, May 15 – 18, 2025.

Miss Rosen is a free­lance arts and pho­tog­ra­phy writer, fol­low her on X.

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