A long-form portrait of transformation, community, and persistence, Nick Haymes’ new photobook honors Love Bailey’s unpredictable yet unbreakable spirit.
Queer becoming is rarely linear. It swerves between chaos and ecstasy, survival and spectacle–often pushing people to hide these parts of themselves. Dancing on the Fault Line insists on visibility, tracing fourteen years in the life of artist and activist Love Bailey through the lens of photographer Nick Haymes.
The new photobook follows Bailey as she moves between cities, identities, and communities. It documents her gender affirmation, her battles for acceptance, and the chosen family that carried her through. Bailey said that documenting her life so closely was like “living with a witness–terrifying and comforting. Surrendering that control gave the work its truth.”
Bailey first reached out to Haymes on Facebook in the mid-2000s, drawn to “that feeling of truth” in his photographs. By then, Haymes was already a respected editorial photographer, shooting for publications such as Dazed And Confused and The Face, Vogue, TeenVogue, and Another Magazine., but was searching for something more personal.
“Bailey was a very free, uncompromising spirit. Despite her sassy personality to the general public, she could be intimate, honest, and open, making her a wonderful person to be with and photograph.”
Nick Haymes
“Bailey was a very free, uncompromising spirit,” said Haymes. “Despite her sassy personality to the general public, she could be intimate, honest, and open, making her a wonderful person to be with and photograph.”
For Haymes, the book continues a thread in his work: long-form portraits of people navigating transformation. He rejects the quick capture in favor of slow trust.
“Situations can’t always be fabricated. You have to be continuously open to your collaborator’s needs rather than building some box to place them into for a single image,” he said. “So a weekend of just conversation and being together was equally important, if not more than image taking.”
Haymes’s patience and personal connection to Bailey gave the work its depth. “Perhaps at times photographs can be invasive,” he said, “but after a while there’s an unspoken language and understanding of how we interact together.”
The visual story, spanning from 2010 to 2024, shifts between black-and-white and color, between beauty and survival, and between rhinestones and mud.
The instability of Bailey’s life–her sudden disappearances, her re-emergence in new guises, her oscillation between spectacle and sanctuary—speaks to the work’s title. Dancing on the Fault Line doesn’t disguise Bailey’s unpredictability; it honors it.
Bailey’s life began with contradiction. As she explained in her personal essay featured in the book, she was born to a gay Iranian father and a lesbian mother who disappeared into the drug trade. She was raised in the San Diego suburbs by her grandparents—a former showgirl and Air Force colonel who taught her glamor and grit.
In high school, the already-extravagant Bailey created her first clothing collection, Bailey X. Facing backlash from her classmates, Bailey refused to shrink. Her defiance carried her into styling for pop stars and, eventually, into New York’s queer scene, where she came out as trans. Community and gender-affirming care created space for her to embrace her true self.
“Both a weapon and a love letter—proof we’ve been here, we’ve fought, and we’re not going anywhere.”
Love Bailey
After years of chaos, she settled on her mother’s ranch in Temecula. There, inspired by 1960s utopian communes, Bailey built Savage Ranch. The 60-acre queer sanctuary and artist residency offers the inclusion she once struggled to find.
By meshing chaotic parties, intimate Ranch gatherings, and quiet moments, Haymes builds not a fixed portrait but a living archive. The book refuses linear storytelling in favor of something more vital: a reminder that queer lives are not only to be defended, but celebrated.
Dancing on the Fault Line arrives at a moment when trans rights face increasing threats and gender-affirming care is being dismantled across the U.S. For Bailey, the book is, “both a weapon and a love letter—proof we’ve been here, we’ve fought, and we’re not going anywhere.”
All images courtesy and by Nick Haymes.
