Both in my exhibits and in magazines, I would often ensure that the models had a voice. Here are some examples.
Margaret Hitchcock (right)
Before the shoot we had agreed that we didn’t want to pose for the camera; we wanted to have the camera capturing us “really” fucking. But I found for myself that there was an element of performance and consciousness of the shot that I couldn’t get away from. I became really conscious of the click of the camera and when I hadn’t heard it for a while I would alter what I was doing. What was good for us sexually wasn’t always good for the camera aesthetically.
It’s exciting to think of people seeing the photos and responding positively to them — especially other dykes. Our community is so starved for images that many times one representation catches shit for not being all things to all people, and such an image will get dissected and interpreted in a million ways. It’s frustrating that my voice stops here with the imagery and these words.
Sexual images of dykes are pretty invisible. If you want to see them, you basically have to create them yourself. Sexuality can be such a powerful and empowering force and there need to be more women controlling images of their sexuality in a positive way. We don’t need to be protected from sex as all the censors say. We need the freedom to be sexual with whomever we want, however we want, wherever we want. I am pleased to have made a contribution to the number of sexual images of dykes in the world.
~ Reprinted from Lickerish Magazine, Issue 1, Winter 1994
Lynn Payne (left)
I felt really comfortable in front of the camera. It helped that Jennifer has photographed me before and that I was being photographed with my lover.
I hope that a lot of people see these photos. It’s very important that images of dykes are out and circulating. What I think is even more important is that the images are real and don’t distort what dyke sexuality is about. Most dykes will probably appreciate the images but it’s the censorship activists, bigots, and heterosexuals who could benefit most. We’re here, we’re not going away so STOP WASTING YOUR TIME!
~ Reprinted from Lickerish Magazine, Issue 1, Winter 1994
Kat Daymond (left)
Questions of queer identity and politics, the construction and reconstruction of gender, and gender/identity as performance constitute my particular areas of interest. As a filmmaker, I am also interested in the various forms and issues of visual representation. In addition, the increasing censorship of lesbian and queer sexual imagery by the Canadian state demands active resistance on all fronts. Choosing to place myself in front of Jennifer’s camera reflects my interest in exploring these concerns from the subject rather than as the maker of images. But I had other concerns as well.
I was curious to see what it would feel like to be in front of the camera, to place my own sexual body — rather than just the body of a written of filmic text — in the public sphere. My exhibitionism has heretofore taken a verbal form and I have always avoided being photographed. This aversion is related, at least in part, to my sense of disembodiment, my difficulty in experiencing myself as inhabiting my own body. So shooting these photographs was simultaneously an exercise in gender/identity constructional performance, in extending my exhibitionism into the visual field, and an attempt to disrupt and shift my relationship to my body. By placing my “private” (i.e. sexual) body in a public context, by placing myself as a sexual being outside myself as an image in a photograph, I hoped to be able to see myself as a body and to locate my own body as a potential site of pleasure.
~ From Lickerish Magazine, Issue 2, Summer 1994
Shannon Bell (right)
Doing a Girl Porn Shoot is like sexual dress-up. I got to be a daddy boy, a dominatrix, a 40’s burlesque entertainer pleasured by a 90’s girl/boy, a girl child playing patient to a curious boy doctor, and of course, an ejaculation queen. All of these are parts of me. I love working with Kat. We have done a number of projects over the years: films, performance, writing, porn pictures. Kat and I have be friends for fifteen years. In 1981, long before I became very sexual, Kat told me to masturbate. I listened.
Kat is a soul mate: her intensity and brilliance combined with my energy and sense of humour allow us to cover the sexual range of these photos, and more, in a couple of hours. The images feel right, in the making and in the photo. Kat like’s to fuck, I like to be fucked. When we use whips I have to try to hit her hard enough and she makes sure that I don’t feel the sting.
I have worked with a number of photographers. Jen is magical. A shoot with her flows. I have a sense of playing and then, too soon, it is over. I ran into a nude Jen at the Y the other day. She is a real beauty. I realized that in the two photo sessions I’ve done with her, in which I had been masturbating, putting all sorts of things up my pussy, pinching my tits, that I had never seen her without clothes. I looked at her body — it is a work of art — and I got embarrassed. It is harder for me to look; it is easy for me to pose. Then I said to myself, “looking and posing are two sides of the same activity.”
~ From Lickerish Magazine, Issue 2, Summer 1994
Ending the criminalization of art and desire
Bad Attitude on Trial
It was a heady time when I first created this body of work. The Butler Decision had just been passed in court in 1988, so named for the owner of a store in Winnipeg who was charged and convicted for selling obscene material. He appealed and was again found guilty in 1992 by the Supreme Court of Canada.
This was seen as a victory by anti-pornography feminists. But what ended up happening was that women were still being oppressed by mainstream pornography producers, while those who wished to present work which represented gay, lesbian or s/m sex became the focus of censorship.
Imagine having a job as an officer for a division of the police department called Project Pornography! It was in April of 1992 that such an officer, after perusing the shelves of Glad Day Bookstore, charged its owner with selling obscene material — an issue of the US magazine Bad Attitude that featured my work. The anti-censorship community in Toronto, already perturbed by what had gone down elsewhere in Canada with similar measures against free expression, hit the streets with a well-organized demonstration. By December of that year, the case was heard in the Provincial Court.
I was called as an expert witness to explain why I didn’t think my work was obscene. I said that, on the contrary, the experience of choosing to model for these photos was empowering. I explained that these models freely approached me to be photographed and that how they want to be depicted was completely up to them. They wanted to be a part of the movement toward the honest depiction of lesbian sexuality, being that previously, it had been mostly the domain of male photographers to satisfy the male gaze with subjects that often weren’t even gay. It stands as one of the most memorable experiences of my life being grilled by a prosecutor about the nature of my work.
I was joined by Becki L. Ross, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of British Columbia, who also took the stand with her best effort at “explicating and contextualizing the specificities, nuances, and complexities of lesbian s/m fantasy” (from the book pictured above) to the straight male prosecutor. It was a court case which drew a lot of attention nationally, for this was a time when anti-censorship activism was a strong force in Canada. But our struggle was not powerful enough to bring about victory in court. On February 16, 1993, Glad Day Bookstore was convicted. There was no jail time, but the store was fined a measly $200 and got a criminal record.
Not to be dissuaded by this outcome, I started my own magazine, Lickerish (an archaic word meaning “eager to taste or enjoy”), Polymorphous Queer Candy. It was a simple 'zine-style publication that invited submissions from all who wished to join the fight to freely represent sexuality in consensual and creative ways. We only put out a few issues when the amount of work and lack of pay caused us to put Lickerish to rest in Toronto’s Gay & Lesbian Archives. But this was my statement against the criminalization of art and desire.
Kenn Quayle gets cheeky at a Toronto anti-censorship demonstration in 1992.