Zum Lesbian Chick

Berlin Lookbook was just featured in Mo:de, pages 50-53.

I’m so touched by what @mamasaysmercy wrote.  Thank you so much.

mamasaysmercy:

Sophia Wallace - Truer (sophiawallace.tumblr.com or sophiawallace.com)

I came across Sophia Wallace on my tumblr dashboard (from a tumblr blog I can no longer recall). Good thing she has tumblr, have a look.

Wallace’s portraits of queer women over a plain background or their daily lives are the opposite of exploitative; and the simple yet confrontational manner in which they look through the camera and at the viewer is of mutual respect— as though a barrier will or must exist, but not as one of exclusion or division but rather in recognition of personal private space of which her subjects have a right to possess. I feel that through her work, proper representation is achieved, and that it’s not something made for the purposes of fetishization or for homophobes to have a laugh at. The significance of these photographs is not merely for the representation of the ‘butch’ female, but also, as explained in her other series, Berlin Lookbook, that “female masculinity is very much present and part of the visual culture in Berlin, not only for lesbian women, but also as a political expression for many heterosexual, feminist Berliners.”

There’s also something about the depth in her eyes, as you will notice in the Truer series— which did catch my attention as the tumblr dashboard flipped images. I’m not saying that because she’s a photographer, it’s necessary that her eyes be beautiful, or that because I’m a writer, my hands have to be stained with ink, but they are beautiful— clear, dark, and full of expression, almost like a lithograph.

Last night to my relief, my sister, her boyfriend and I dragged ourselves away from being dragged into the horrible hole that is King St before paying for an event whose line looked like it had only seen underage kids all night. For the rest of the night, I had whisky, instant noodles and borrowed Nietzsche’s The Gay Science from her boyfriend instead. Nat usually warns me when I don’t realise I’m reading a philosophy book that’s way over my head— if I don’t listen to her and persist, I end up having to put it down like an overly ambitious numbnut. David assured me that this one won’t be and gave me twenty four audio lecture recordings for  reassurance. Being Nietszche’s most personal work, I feel that it’s more accessible than the other books I’ve tried vainly to understand— like Beyond Good and Evil. I couldn’t have gone through reading the book without the lectures, which have helped remove common misconceptions about Nietzsche and explain his hyperbolic writing style and frame of mind. I thought of sharing this quote I read last night: “The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: again and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep— all ordered society puts passion to sleep— and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure of what is new, daring, untried; they compelled men to pit opinion against opinion.’