Exploring

dedicated to a love a few summers ago

Donna Gottschalk’s “Brave, Beautiful Outlaws” is opening at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art on Aug. 29. While Ms. Gottschalk doesn’t identify as a documentary photographer or a photojournalist, she has been making pictures since she was 17. Photos selected from her 50-year personal archive will be made public for the first time.

Her work documents her closeness with her working class family and her involvement with the radical lesbian, sometimes separatist, communities in the late ’60s and ’70s.

The photos are tinged with mourning and mystery. She’s been holding their memory for decades, “fiercely protective” and unwilling to “subject them to scrutiny, judgment and abuse” from the outside world.

Fragments of Sappho, circa 630 - 580 BC. Translated by Anne Carson.

“Lesbian subcultures of the era responded in their own unique ways to Hollywood cinema. Some working-class lesbians expressed their sexual identity by adopting either butch or femme personas, rigid roles that in some way parodied the very structure of heterosexuality. They often latched on to films and figures that spoke to those constructs. For example, Julie Harris’s tomboy in The Member of the Wedding (1952) and Joan Crawford’s butch gunslinger in Johnny Guitar (1954) became important lesbian icons. The love/hate relationship between Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge in Johnny Guitar, a rare female western, also fueled lesbian fandoms, as did James Dean. Apparently Dean’s rumored bisexuality and his combination of both “tough” and “soft” masculine characteristics made him a role model for “baby butch” lesbians.

Another key butch image of the 1950s was Doris Day as the title character in Calamity Jane (1953). Jane wears buckskin breeches, talks in a low raspy drawl, and repeatedly challenges any man to try to outdo her. The film plays with all sorts of gender turmoil: Wild Bill Hickok dressed up as a squaw at one point, and a male character named Francis is assumed to be female named Frances. Perhaps most memorably, the butch Jane and the femme Katie become roomates and move in together. Their duet about interior decorating, “A Woman’s Touch,” certainly had extra meaning for lesbian audiences of the era. Jane’s anthem “Secret Love” also became a huge hit in lesbian and gay bars because of its obvious ties to life in the closet.“

i’ve felt your teeth

two years ago i wore baggy sweatpants and flip flops every day because i was depressed but then decided eh to hell with it and bought some black edgy emo clothes bc thats how i always wanted to dress but never got a chance to and it was only then that i realized that the sweatpants flip flops look was just keeping me in my depression funk. i didnt like the way i looked and i didnt identify with the clothes i was wearing and it only made me feel worse.

i then went through my entire wardrobe and got rid of everything that made me feel that way.

now i have multiple outfit possibilities requiring different levels of effort but on days where putting on clothes just seems like a project i just have to put on black jeans and a band t-shirt and i can still feel good about the way i look which is a really good way to start off my day.