Before and After: Photos of gender reassignment surgery.

Welcome to Mamamia’s art endeavour, the Voulez-Vous Project. Every week we celebrate emerging artists, designers, illustrators, creators and women who knit using their vaginas. (Kidding. Maybe.) Our aim: to help the internet become a slightly more beautiful, captivating, or thought-provoking place by making art accessible.

These powerful before and after photographs show transgender males and females who are undergoing gender reassignment surgery. They’re raw, they’re honest, they’re hard to look away from.

The images were captured and created as part of a series called ‘Reassign‘, shot by photographer Claudia Gonzalez.

Gonzalez has four hopes for her project. “Freedom, progress, diversity and respect,” she told The Huffington Post.

The subjects of the photographs are from Cuba, a country with heavy prejudices against the LGBT community. Discrimination and oppression are common, and many turn to prostitution or drugs to get by. The trans community is largely ignored and Gonzalez wanted to do something to change this.

This is why you shouldn’t talk to transgender people about their genitals.

The photographer found The National Center for Sexual Education, called CENESEX in Cuba. CENESEX is a research institute into the field of human sexality. “The idea [for the project] quickly came to me. When I heard about CENESEX, I felt committed.”

The subjects of her dual portraits are all transgender individuals who are involved with CENESEX. Each dual photo was taken on the same day, show not the physical side of gender reassignment surgery but the symbolic side.

“My biological father is now a woman.”

Click through the gallery below for the entire series. For more information on CENESEX, click here. To view more of Claudia’s work, click here.

Do you know an artist (or are YOU an artist) who creates beautiful or thought-provoking work and whom you think should be featured on Mamamia’s Voulez-Vous Project? Send an email to caitlin@mamamia.com.au.