(gentle music) - What is it about this word that makes people hate us?

Why are queer people so afraid of this word?

Where did this start?

(laughs) How did it happen?

And how can we change that?

And so butch is not a dirty word, is literally what I was trying to say.

I'm like, why do we all think this word is so horrendous?

(gentle music continues) (traffic humming) So today, we're photographing somebody called Silver.

They're like a, I think they might be Gen Z, so they're younger than the people I usually photograph, which I love, because they tend to have like just like less rigid ideas about gender and sexuality.

And Silver is a little bit of an Instagram celeb, and they're a performance artist, they're a singer.

The second shoot later in the day, Silver and one of their best friends, Marisa, they just have very good energy together.

And then I thought I'd bring in a third person, who's an older butch person.

I think it just helps round out the shoot and to see just different generations interacting with each other.

So yeah, Murph is on their way, and they're going to meet us here, and we'll all go off together.

(people laughing and speaking indistinctly) How do you feel about being photographed today?

(Silver and Esther laugh) - [Silver] I don't know.

I'm nervous for sure, but- - [Esther] Nervous how?

- Well, I don't like, yeah, I don't want to be small or hide pieces of who I am, so that's part of why I was like, "Yeah, dude, let's do it."

- Mm-hm.

(laughs) - (laughing) And you asked.

- So I've always called myself a creator, 'cause so much of what I've done is creative production.

I've always had this drive to just create spaces for people that are underrepresented to come together.

And I've always had this drive to make it look cool.

Like I grew up with skateboarding, and so I just picked up how to brand something and how to present something so people want to be a part of it.

(traffic humming) (Esther knocking) I love your outfit now, actually.

Keep that on.

- Do you want it just casual?

- Yeah, just casual for now.

We'll just do some warming up.

One of the number one complaints (bright music) that I hear from other butch people is people project this kind of masculinity onto them that's actually not all that accurate for them.

So a lot of the project is about breaking down those stereotypes.

People refer to the word butch as a noun, as an adjective, as a gender identity all in itself.

Nobody can really say what is or what isn't butch.

There's so few other terms that do that.

It feels like a safe space for me.

All right, pick up where you left off, please.

- [Marisa] You are not grab, yeah- - You are not grabbing my cheeks.

(laughs) (people speaking indistinctly) Big smile from everyone.

(camera clicking) Open your eyes, Silver.

(everyone laughing) Cute.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Yeah, I got you.

I started doing music stuff when I was like 16.

I had moved to LA by myself.

- Oh, you moved to LA by yourself.

- Yeah, it was really like popping up.

- Yeah.

- It was cool.

And then things just took a really sharp turn.

As soon as I came back, I like hardcore humbled myself in the sense of like, I was 20 at that point, and like I was like, "Budge, what am I going to do "if I'm not going to do music," because that was like really scary for me.

And so, I had to go back to high school as a 20-year-old and I didn't think I was going to do it, one, 'cause I was like, "I'm 20, who... "What high school's going to let a 20-year-old in?"

And I found that- - Did they let you into- - They did, an alternative high school let me in.

- [Esther] What do we got going on down here?

- A lot of everything.

- [Esther] Put your chin down a little bit, yeah, yeah.

And then eyes up at me.

(camera clicking) Love it, okay, hold.

- [Silver] What got you into photography?

- Honestly, this project.

I was so anti being a creative when I was young.

Okay, wait, so this time...

I wasn't the demographic of people in Australia that would necessarily be thought of as creative or as artistic.

When I heard art, I just saw a bunch of people who would kind of shut the door on people that didn't look like them.

And so I kind of grew a sense of resentment towards art and artists in general, and I really moved so far away from that terminology.

Yeah, the black.

Okay, I want to get some with the camo, but I also want to get some with the getup.

No, sorry, okay, first, leave that other shirt on for first, and then we'll get a full outfit change.

- [Marisa] Okay.

(camera clicking and beeping) - [Esther] Look at the hat now.

Okay.

(gentle music) - You know, when it comes to queer beauty, I feel like you don't see it represented as much.

It's super hard to find, and we're finally getting captured for it.

And it's like a buffet, different flavors of us, (laughs) so it's nice.

- I don't know if I would use the word buffet, but I do really love that Esther's project feels like it really, I don't know, highlights different forms of butchness in a way where it's like not every butch is the same, and that's something I've really taken away from that page.

- Growing up in an Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia, I didn't see representation of who I am now.

And I always wonder of like who could I have been if I had come into my identity and myself and my self-confidence and my gender expression earlier.

And that's what I love about this project and Esther and the way that they go about representing butchness in this expansive way.

- So in the early days, I had this vision of I didn't want the portraits to just be portraits.

I wanted to capture people in their environments.

So, it was almost like I was looking for this mixture between portrait photography and photojournalism.

I was always using different photographers and using many different people, and I just couldn't quite get my vision back.

And so, at some point I was like, "I'm just going to pick up a camera "and start trying to capture it myself."

(camera clicking and beeping) Now look at each other in the eyes and smile.

(everyone laughing) - [Marisa] Try not to breathe on it.

(everyone laughing) I know, hold it in.

(laughing) - Just take a deep breath.

(inhales) - [Esther] Okay, I'm ready when you all are.

(camera clicking and beeping) - Wait, we both hold?

- Yeah.

(everyone laughing) - You shook your head yeah.

- (indistinct) I didn't blow that hard.

- [Marisa] I (indistinct) ju-jitsu.

I grew up in Melbourne and it had such a contrasting...

It was such a contrasting experience to what it's like on the West Coast of the USA for butch people and for masculine or (indistinct) people.

I kind of just honestly didn't even think it was an option.

I found it very difficult to date.

I just kind of resigned to the fact that I wasn't attractive, and sex and love and romance weren't going to be for me.

(gentle music) I made my way to the states to Portland.

When I was about 23, my early twenties, I saw this butch lesbian who was just a little bit older than me.

I had no idea I could be like that, and she was so confident, and she was so in herself, and she really didn't have any visible shame that I could see.

I saw the way that they navigated the world in Portland.

I saw how people responded to them, and it was so positively like, that's just nothing I'd ever seen in my life.

It blew my mind.

I remember the start of the project.

I was like, "What I want to do "is I want to show people in Melbourne "how people think about butch lesbians "or butches in the states."

And Portland, specifically, just had this kind of anything goes energy.

There was this sense that the city truly was run by lesbians.

(laughs) Originally, it was just supposed to be one little zine.

I thought we'd launch it at the local queer book store.

We used Facebook back then, and I put a Facebook event up for it, and I was so scared, 'cause I was really, really scared to put it out publicly, and I was almost preemptively embarrassed that no one was going to show up.

I think we had maybe 50 seats available, and as soon as I put the Facebook event up, literally I think like 600 people responded as RSVP.

They wanted to come.

I adored photographing this person.

The light was just so beautiful in that workshop, and they were so in themself, like in their creative space.

It really comes through in kind of their posturing.

And when I look at this, I just see a softness in such a toughness in the masculinity, but also the softness that comes through in how the gaze is held and how the body posturing is held.

You always see people's hands, and you can kind of see that's really where a lot of their softer attributes come out.

This photo here, I think, is pretty beautiful as well.

And you see this person's got this like army-style haircut.

And I know that this person spoke about it in their interview, like how differently people respond to them when they're out in the world with their feminine partner and their children.

People are a lot more open to them and kinder to them versus when they're in the world on their own, where people are a little bit more reserved towards them, and I think that's a really common experience that a lot of butch people talk about.

(gentle music) The first time I saw my photos outside of a digital space and printed and enlarged and framed, I think that's the moment I was like, "Oh my God, I had no idea, "but I think I'm actually a photographer."

Or like, "That's art."

I remember what it felt like to be seen for the first time and to see other people having that experience through this project is yeah, incredibly humbling, and it's emotional.

It's really, really emotional, yeah.

Because the experience of being gender non-conforming when you're young is... You're constantly told to shut yourself down.

Anything you feel that's true to yourself, shut it down.

It's not right.

People don't respond to it well.

So it's like you learn this pathway in your brain that's like, anything that feels real and true to you is not correct, and you should be something else.

So really, it's like I've only come into these identities through being seen as those things by other people.

Somebody else called me a butch and it was...

They called me a butch in a really good way, and I was like, "Am I?

All right.

"I guess I'm butch then," you know?"

And somebody else called me an artist, and I was like, "Am I?"

And I'm like, "I guess I am."

I know the incredible value that these people occupy in the world, and I have only learned that through people teaching me that about myself.

And what I always try to do through these photographs and through this work, is just give that gift to other people, the gift that was given to me.

(gentle music continues) (no audio) (bright music) - [Announcer] Oregon Art Beat shares the stories of Oregon's amazing artists.

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