thiis

I’m late. And the greater the exacerbation with myself the faster the minutes peel away on the cellular hauling me into a numerical vacuum of brow raising lateness and lameness, the slower I am pacing and wheezing down Fordsburg’s meanest of winters. “Geez you’re early” a mid to high pitching raspy voice teases as I scurry in. A few chuckles recoil off the white light of the studio walls and everyone stands out. It’s the gay marriage of art school ego and skater chick bravado to reference a pair of lesbian cliches. There are many and I feel like I may have walked into one, but I smell cheap whisky in the air and my heart smiles. I reserve all judgement and look forward to a glass or three. An apology, an introduction and various awkward moments later I think I can hear the white walls shriek with the muffled ancient cry for colour, for difference and for identity. We are all here in the studio today to make images that speak to what it is to be lesbian in our rainbow nation of zero tolerance. I, on the other hand, get the feeling I am in for a schooling.

In a matter of moments these walls will give of faces and of stories, maybe. More notably, however, these white walls will reek of subtext, because often where there is a lense pointed there is a subject performing and there is a question about representation, and the construction of it. What is being said, what is not being said and what am I seeing? The four white walls of this studio are both a private space in which to create oneself as well as a safe place in which to safely do so. In this place tonight girls who are into girls can have out their creative, sexual, aspirational, and most alluring to me, vulnerable being. There is a frolicsome and deviant mood in the arctic air. The girls and guys, sealed off from the many guises of heteronormative prejudice and its violence prone spawn, ignorance and fear, seem perfectly primed for war like nubile lasses in the trenches up to all sorts of mischief. They are ready to put on a show about themselves. I can’t help but observe in between shots of whisky from the bottle cap, that this studio is the same place, the same safe space that they need to transcend. Because whilst today this space may be a sort of retreat into images, it cannot delineate their sexuality. The shoot can never document the lesbian scene for there is no such. Being lesbian is not a party or place or a reality show on Vuzu TV. It is waking up and going to bed and the life spent in between.

The relationship between fantasy and representation is the story that unfolds as the camera flashes in nervous fragments. On one non-descript end of the white washed studio cubicle are toys, jewels and clothing items in a jumbled-up pile of amoeba on a chair. A toy machine gun, a silvery plastic toy sword, a black toy balaclava and a thick set of gold and silver plated toy chains gleam out of the monochrome mass. The toy machine gun is a favourite and the girls take turns with it in front of the camera. One of the dames, she’s dominant in the group, a Brenda Fassie version of funk and blues crooner Meshelle Ndegeocello, has her ginger accented mane of dreaded hair wrapped in a keffiyeh. It becomes worthwhile to note here, the keffiyeh – amongst many things, as an image of no peace in the middle east as our media would often have us believe. I wonder if this has anything to do with the theme although I suspect it to be the models own everyday armor of defence to assert her out in a hostile public space.

The references to war in art and life, although fashionable, are undeniable as tools with which the girls are to reclaim their legitimate place in the world outside the studio walls and the gay bars. Out at taxi ranks, at bus stops, in clinics, and in churches, at schools, at banks, in work environments and in the home, the body of the lesbian woman is a site of common place aversion fuelled by a common beilef that patriarchy is unfalsifiable, a common legecy of stunted reasoning. Herein the lesbian woman, the gay man, the queer individual is a freak of nature, abject and in the line for a cure. The cure is violation. And the way I see it in a very important sense, whilst the shoot may be playful, the theme of agression and fierceness implores the socio-political dimension, which I can’t ignore. It is catagorically that, violation of someones freedoms begets a fight for someones elses freedoms. It begets a call to arms, machine guns stacked, stomach in and chest out.

But it is also the case that it is a Saturday night, the coldest one and the afternoon was spent pouting and posing, smizing and generally being exhibitionist in front of the camera. A scholarly reading into the politics of queer representation, of misleading media images of a middle eastern garment of clothing and of what it means when one of the girls, the youngest in the group, a bugsy eyed fetching tom protests “red lipstick makes me feel so gay”, this kind of reading seems wearisome at this moment. But the challenge of coming out to family is thorn at my sides and before the Sapphic party dissolves into the navy night I have to ask the question. Some have, some haven’t, some don’t quite plan to I sense but there’s a consensus that out in the wild of worlds it all boils down to a word. Therein lies the disproportionate loathing. It seems, to announce “mama, I am lesbian” is often too honest a claim to homosexuality, too far an affront to understanding. At best it is taken lightly as not a permanent thing, at worst it is offensive. The girls who are into girls continue though. They continue to have their being, to be make plans and make images. They continue to create themselves freely in defiance outside of these four walls. Then the dominant one sums it up in her raspy drone “well mina I love being lesbian. I love it”. She lets out a giggle. I learnt something today. It seems the posed lesbian image is a layer through which the honest lesbian photograph, the honest lesbian moment should be rediscovered.

All Images © Musa Nxumalo