 I started doing this in about 2012, actually. And I started it because I didn't see anybody who looked like me in the media ever. And I still kind of don't. So I wanted to start documenting my community. And here in San Francisco, we have a plethora of Masculine of Center, which identified or stud people. And right around 2012, I started to hear a lot of people in the lesbian community saying that butchers were disappearing, which I disagreed with. I think that we've evolved a bit. But anyway, I'll start this. It all started actually with this photograph. These are a couple of my friends. And Alyssa, the one who was pregnant in the front, was pregnant. And I hadn't known any butch get pregnant. And I thought that was pretty amazing that she was pregnant. I love the idea that you could combine such a masculine person with such feminine traits. I mean, I think there's nothing more feminine probably than being able to give birth. And so under the guise that I was shooting them for portraits to hang around their house, I was able to photograph her and her partner in her last month of pregnancy, knowing that I would probably use this eventually, but I just thought that was incredible and I wanted to capture it. So I decided maybe I should actually try and practice my portraiture. I've been a photographer my entire life, but I never took it seriously and I never thought that I could be an artist or anything, do anything major with it. So I was like, I need to practice. So I got some lights and I started experimenting and I set up a situation in my house and one of my good friends, Michelle, came home from work. She had a tie on and a shirt and her wife had just given birth and was sick of being with the baby all day long, so they switched. And I was like, Michelle, can you sit for me? And I just wanted to try out this thing on you. And so I snapped this. That baby is now four years old. Oh, thank you. Whoever did the lights? And so between these two pictures, I kind of realized I had something pretty special. I think that Butch is beautiful and I think that my community is beautiful and yet our stories are rarely told ever. And, you know, there are no Butches in Vogue magazine. There are no Butches in Elle magazine or Cosmopolitan or GQ even. And I think that growing up that would have drastically changed how I felt about myself being a very masculine person. So I continued to ask my friends and it did take some begging. I think traditionally Butches have tended to hide themselves from being seen and so naturally nobody wanted to sit for me, especially knowing that I might show these later. But I talked a few people in. My friend Beck. And I was still sort of working out my sense of photographic style. I wasn't totally sure how to capture everybody. My friend Sam. And Sam was the first person I was like, you know, the thing that most people haven't seen are Butch bodies. Usually only their partners get to see that. So Sam, would you take your clothes off for me? And they agreed to it after a couple glasses of whiskey. I think something that's tied together all of these shoots are that most people have had in order to relax, had to have a drink or had to have a hit or something, which I think is pretty telling of that kind of anxiety around getting your picture taken. I think in order to be relaxed that much to be seen, I think implies that there's been a lot of trauma around being seen before. So I tried to capture what it is to be Butch. This is a pretty, you know, if you are Butch-identified or masked, then I've said I'm identified. This is a typical thing. You go into a barber shop as a female and you want your hair cut like a male. Not so much anymore, but before that would be, they would kind of just look at you a little bit weird and you'd be surrounded by men, which is sort of the life. It's my friend Katrina. Oops. And so I gradually went through the list of everybody that I knew that might be Butch-identified and began to photograph them. The other thing that was very important to me was getting lots of diversity in race. I'm mixed race and I definitely feel like sometimes LGBT things can be very white-centered. I'm just going to let this play here. Right, so I wondered what it would be like to be in a room surrounded by photographs of Butch women. How would that make me feel? And I had a showing of my work. I thought I would shoot everybody that I knew and then have a show. So I photographed about 30 people and got the prints back and set them all up in my living room trying to figure out how I was going to set them up. I had my first show at the Lexington Club, which is now closed. Hopefully all of you got a chance to be there. And when I got them and I put them all around me, I had this very emotional moment, this very powerful moment of pride in what I look like and who I was and I realized how many people were like me. And I think that sense of belonging is huge, especially for any LGBT people. So I was trying to capture what is it to be Butch now? What do people look like? What are they wearing? What do they live? I started to realize about 40 or 50 pictures in that I was capturing as much of San Francisco as I was capturing of people, which is pretty amazing. I am from here. And the city's changed quite a bit in the last four or five years. And I was trying to capture a sense of a place for the queer community. I think it's still a very queer place, but it's changing. I wanted to capture the variety of Butches that are actually out there. And I chose the title Butch because I felt like it was sort of a nod to where we've kind of come from. I think that a lot of people prefer different identities now. I think people call themselves queer, call themselves transgender, or stud, or any number of other terms, because I think Butch is kind of an older term and maybe not as cool or something. And it implies that gene and boot wearing, probably white working class, masculine loose standard of queer person. I think probably a lot of people now just don't identify as that. I think I even call myself queer now. I like the way it sounds better. And it doesn't kind of come with that stigma, I think a historical stigma of just kind of being ostracized. But I kind of wanted to unite the generation that came before us of Butch women, who identified as Butch or who identified as a lesbian, with the younger community because we are able to be who we are now because of the people that came before us. And I definitely feel like there's a rift in the community. I just recently gotten sort of an online battle with some older Butch lesbians who have some interesting notions about the younger lesbians and gender. I think there's this weird sense from the young kids that the older Butches and older queer people are a little out of touch with some new politics. And I think that the older folks are sort of stuck in their ways. But they have provided us with an opportunity to be ourselves. So I think that the younger generation also needs to give due respect to that generation that came before us that has now experienced the world so different than we have. And there is a spectrum, I feel like as you can see in the pictures, I think Butch, masculinity and all that come in all races and all ages. Even there is a spectrum of masculinity and femininity within the Butch identity. I think when I was younger I always thought I had to be super tough in order to be Butch and have a black leather belt and black leather jacket and just be super macho. And I wasn't. So it kind of felt a little bit forced at times. And I love that here in San Francisco there was just such a variety of people and such a variety of Butch that if you're just male or female or whatever, there can be a huge spectrum in personality and who you are. And I think the same is true for Butch. It really is sort of a third gender or fourth or fifth. I feel like there's between Butch and F to M there is seven genders just in between. I love the idea of a Butch body. Like what does that mean? Like if you take a Butch's clothes off are they still Butch or is it just the clothes? Is it the personalities? Is it the body? Also when I first started I thought that I wanted to photograph just Butch women who still identified with their body and still had their breasts and everything. And I realized actually that it actually was a thing top surgery and the removal or the keeping of one's breasts as a Butch person is a thing and it's a personal thing and it doesn't mean that you're transgender if you do it or it can mean it whatever. But that was kind of a theme with Butch women as sort of this weird thing with breasts. So some of the people that I photographed have had top surgery and some people didn't and were proud to keep their breasts. I definitely wanted to show that aspect of it too. And I'd say probably 10 or so people have gone on to transition fully into men. And I made the I guess controversial statement that the Butch identity overlaps all these different groups which is kind of true. So I realized that documenting all these people that I really couldn't decide what it was. It was revealing itself to me what it was. And I think we're all sort of part of that queer community. But there are now 123 photographs total. 123 portraits. I got five couples I think which was another thing. Sort of the idea of two Butches dating. I think is not taboo but I feel like it rarely happens and it's kind of not like celebrated. There's always like this Butch femme thing. And so I really wanted to celebrate the couples that were Butch identified and loved Butches because they're out there as well. Basically I think that this is just a group that never gets seen. I think it's happening more these days. There's that show I don't even know what the show is called but I know that there's a person that is gender and non-conforming so like that's a first. And it's 2017. I think we live in a bubble here. I think that's the last one.