(Photo courtesy Fabian Piñeiro)
The Good Page features positive LGBTQ+ news in Central Florida and Tampa Bay, uplifting and inspiring stories highlighting locals in our community. In this issue, we meet Fabian Piñeiro.
When trans people in Florida are being told to shrink, Piñeiro is asking them to take up space.
His portrait project, “No Hiding in Florida,” documents trans people across the state on their own terms: not as headlines, not as talking points but as themselves.
When Piñeiro first photographed himself during his transition in Puerto Rico, he wasn’t trying to start a larger project. He was responding to a class assignment during COVID to create work about something socially urgent. He turned the camera inward.
“I never saw anyone who looked like me online,” Piñeiro shares. “I couldn’t look at someone and say, ‘Wow, I resonate with them.’”
That absence became the seed.
Now, that seed has grown into “No Hiding in Florida,” a portrait project documenting trans people across the state at a moment when visibility feels both affirming and complicated.
The project was originally meant to focus on trans visibility in Puerto Rico. But life shifted. Piñeiro moved to Florida in order to transition more freely, medically and socially.
Then came the political climate. Watching trans people be told to “hide,” to be quiet, to shrink, that changed the direction of the work.
“This is the only reason I moved to Florida,” he said. “To be myself. And seeing that being taken away, I knew it was time.”
The name says it plainly: “No Hiding in Florida.”
The project doesn’t argue. It documents trans people standing as they are, on their own terms. Piñeiro speaks about visibility with care. It’s not simple.
“Visibility can be empowering,” he explains. “But it can also make somebody a target.”
Participants are always in control. Some choose full public visibility. Others choose private sessions where the images are theirs alone. There is no pressure to share, no pressure to disclose more than feels safe.
The power, Piñeiro says, is in choice. Being visible should never be forced, it should be intentional.
The project is free. It is accessible. It is collaborative.
Piñeiro has loved photography since he was 15. He studied communication in Puerto Rico, with a focus on radio, television and photography. Now, he’s continuing his degree at the University of Central Florida.
What draws him to photography isn’t flash, it’s intimacy.
“I don’t just want people to pose,” he says. “I want to learn their story.”
Before he even lifts the camera, there’s usually a conversation. Participants talk about their families, their transitions, their fears, their pride. The portraits are shaped by those exchanges, by what someone wants to show, and what they want to keep private.
He says there was one participant who wanted to show his top surgery scars but felt unsure. They moved at his pace. They talked. They adjusted.
An hour after the shoot, Piñeiro received a message: “Can we do another session? I’ve never felt this confident.”
“That’s what keeps me going,” Piñeiro says. “Not pride in myself, pride in them.”
Growing up trans and Latino in Puerto Rico was isolating. Representation was scarce. Online, the trans men he saw rarely looked like him.
Creating this project shifted something internally; it taught him to be kinder to himself, it taught him to be softer with his family and it taught him confidence he didn’t grow up with.
“Seeing other trans people be proud of who they are,” he shares, “helped me feel proud of myself.”
Hope, he says, is non-negotiable.
“We can’t lose hope as a trans community,” Piñeiro says. “Seeing trans joy, that’s what gives me hope.”
For Piñeiro, each portrait becomes proof, not just of existence, but of possibility. A reminder that trans people in Florida are not abstract political talking points. They are neighbors, students, artists and friends. They are here.
If someone is considering joining the project but feels unsure, Piñeiro wants them to know they are always in control.
“Your boundaries come first,” he says. “There is no pressure to be anything but yourself.”
Participants can reach him through Instagram at @fabivn.png, where a Google form is linked in his bio. He travels throughout Florida to photograph participants and hopes to expand the project statewide.
“This project is for them,” he says. “It’s not for me.”
Interested in being featured in The Good Page? Email Editor-in-Chief Ryan Williams-Jent at Ryan@WatermarkOutNews.com in Tampa Bay or Central Florida Bureau Chief Bellanee Plaza at Bellanee@WatermarkOutNews.com in Central Florida.
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