Photo Journal Monday: Jeanette Spicer

© Jeanette Spicer. I Heard Your Ship Was Coming In, 2022.

Photos and Text by Jeanette Spicer

In the series What it Means to Be Here I make photographs, mixed media and videos to grapple with the absence of lesbian photographers, the lesbian gaze, and the long history of patriarchal constructs that shape our ideas of the female form, and the creation of images. I capture the intimacy between lesbian, bisexual and queer women from my community of lovers and friends, with a sense of ordinariness and reverence for sex, and pleasure with agency, and spontaneity. Through this work I call into question the historic lack of lesbian representation within the photographic medium with which I engage. 

© Jeanette Spicer. The Beach in Winter, 2023.

The Beach in Winter, 2023, was more planned than my usual photographs. I woke up that morning and remembered that we had access to a car, so we decided to drive to the beach. It was a cold February day, and while freezing, the beach is always dead which makes it easier to make nude photographs. 

For years I have been sketching, thinking about and trying to make images that represent lesbian sex. Since the height of AIDS in the 80's and 90's the imagery around BDSM and lesbian sex in general has really dipped. Compounded by photography being so direct, it can be hard to make those images, particularly when I am not trying to provide more content of women's bodies for male pleasure. With that said, the more implicit image is an easier route and what inspired this photograph. It isn't clear what my partner and I are doing, but you can guess. I composed the image so that the genders of the two people in the images aren't clear. I want viewers to search the photographs for signifiers and clues which in turn makes them contemplate their perspectives, assumptions and preconceived notions about intimacy, gender and sexuality. It is also important to me to make images that represent me, not only for myself, but for the lesbian images that have been passed over, never published, invisibilized or not supported. I make this work also as a reference for future generations.

© Jeanette Spicer. Snowshapes, 2021.

© Jeanette Spicer. S at Home, 2022.

There is a power in obstructing, abstraction and moving along edges to occupy a different kind of space within the frame. I photograph the female body in these ways to show that women’s bodies are much more than the desire of men as we have been trained to understand. In my images the body is a place of complexity, detail, a source point of intimacy, of another’s touch, a site of action, play, trauma, power and vulnerability. A place where you can become more than just a body, you can become a part of the world around you. To do this, I often challenge the frame's constraints by reorganizing and flattening space and I consider what it means to represent my gaze: the lesbian gaze. Many lesbian images are documentary in style, so instead I construct my images and create in-camera “collages” of bodies and other objects within a space as a new way of seeing. 

© Jeanette Spicer.  S Pulls My Tampon Out, 2022.

© Jeanette Spicer. I Saw Jesus, 2022.

Historically, interiors have represented isolation and confinement for women. However, the interiors in my work represent independence and a reclaiming of ownership. My exteriors, sometimes shot in gay male cruising sites, offer an opportunity to explore these sexual playgrounds dominated by men to consider why women don’t have these spaces. What it Means to Be Here emerged from a desire to acknowledge and do something about the absence of lesbian photographers, the lesbian gaze and the long history of patriarchal constructs, and male gaze that inform our ideas of the female form, intimacy and creation of images.

You can view more of Jeanette’s work on her website and Instagram.

© Jeanette Spicer. S and Devon, 2020.