One City, One Pride Queer Arts Festival 2013 Panel Presentation, "Lesbian Photographers Panel at WeHo Pride", Carolyn Sherer, Betsy Kalin, and Connie Kurtew, Angela Brinskele, 2013/09/19
[caption: Lesbian Photographers: Exploring Life Through the Lens A Conversation with Carolyn Sherer, Betsy Kalin, Connie Kurtew]
[caption: Panel Presentation Sponsored by City of West Hollywood One City, One Pride Queer Arts Festival 2013 in conjunction with June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives]
[caption: Angela Brinskele, Moderator MazerLesbianArchives.org]
Brinskele: I would just wonder if you would mind just introducing yourself. Carolyn, you could start, and then Betsy, and then Connie.
[caption: Carolyn Sherer, CarolynSherer.com]
Sherer: Okay. I’m a photographer, not a performer, and not a public speaker. I have always worked.
[poster: Living in Limbo: Lesbian Families in the Deep South]
I’m obviously from Birmingham, Alabama. I have always–my work has always addressed issues of identity. Typically, kind of marginalized, segments of society. This is the most personal project that I’ve ever done, Living in Limbo: Lesbian Families in the Deep South.
[caption: Betsy Kalin, ItchyBeeProductions.com]
Kalin: Hi, I’m Betsy, I actually, I started out as a photographer and then moved into film and video. And I’ve done a nuber of lesbian-oriented films, I started with Roof, which was a fiction film, and then I did Hearts Cracked Open about, a docentary about lesbian tantric sex. And then I also did Chained, which is a documentary, and I’m working on a feature documentary right now called East L.A. Interchange and I have a short film, fiction film, that’s gonna be on the festival circuit this summer. It’s called Click.
[caption: Connie Kurtew, KurtewPhotography.com]
Kurtew: Hi, I’m Connie, I’m, originally from Germany, I’m a photographer. I’ve lived in San Diego for 15 years now. Started just in general photography [shows portraits] portraits, weddings, and I get a little bit more into community and do, lesbian–how they actually wanna see themselves.
Brinskele: Okay, thanks. I wanted to start by talking with Carolyn. If you haven’t seen the exhibit upstairs [shows family portraits], it’s called, Living in Limbo and it’s Lesbians and their Families in the Deep South, all in Birmingham, Alabama. And so,I guess I would just like to ask Carolyn first, what made you want to do this project?
Sherer: I have to say, I’m going–if you were there last night, I’m sorry you’ll have to hear this again, but I think it’s important. I want to tell the story that inspired this. I have a–I had a friend, who–well first of all, let me just say, I’m from Alabama. There’s not a single law there to protect the civil rights of the LGBT population. None.
A friend of mine, was dying of cancer in the hospital with her partner by her side, and her family changed the locks on their home and moved in. So when my friend died, she had to get the police to let her in to get a change of clothes to wear to the funeral. And then, when we went to the funeral, the heterosexual friends said that they didn't know the couple were gay, even though they’d lived together twenty years. And that they didn’t know gay people could be treated that way in Alabama. So that was really the, a, you know, a trigger for me, I kind of had an epiphany. I didn’t know what I was gonna do, but I had a sense that I was gonna do something with my work, that was also advocacy for my community. So that’s sort of how I–and then, I just sort of toyed around with different concepts, how I could do something that was conceptual in a way that respected people’s privacy but was authentic.
Brinskele: You also have some of the–well, let me ask this question, was it difficult to get people to participate?
Sherer: Initially, it was very difficult. Initially I didn’t want to photograph myself, with my partner. We were all kind of afraid, living in fear, really. Most people in Alabama that I knew were living in a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” manner, so everybody kind of knew that you were family, but you know, you didn’t talk about it, didn’t put a name on it.
Brinskele: I do know that some of the participants actually wouldn’t face the camera.
Sherer: Oh yeah.
Brinskele: Is that right?
Sherer: So, my concept was you could choose to face the camera or have your back to the camera. People wore what they wanted. I photographed them in the studio, just to protect their privacy. I let people decide what they wanted to do. I mean I’d handhold my camera, and I put a mark, and just said, “Stay in this general area” and then I just moved around them.
And I also delivered, in series, three words, and sort of captured their response to the words. One was, “lesbian,” the other was “pride,” and then finally it was “prejudice,” and, I will tell you one of the big things that I noticed and that I learned is that, the women my age, many of them, particularly in the beginning, would–when I said “lesbian,” some would say, “You know I’m really uncomfortable with that word, that makes me–,” there was a lot of discomfort and when I said “prejudice,” there were some that cried.
The young people, when I said “lesbian,” they’re like [makes dismissive face] “don’t put a label on me.” And when I said “prejudice,” they were like, “Well, you know, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” Of course then, one of them’s girlfriend would say, “Yeah, but you remember those guys drove down the road and yelled ‘dyke’” I mean, so there, they had some sense of prejudice, but certainly nothing that my peers had experienced. So it’s, any time I, I don’t know how it is for y’all, but any time I have done a documentary project, and I’ve done several, I learn something and I change because of it. And so the thing that changed most for me besides coming out of the closet, that’s pretty obvious but, the thing that changed the most is I understood that even in Birmingham things are changing at 100 miles an hour.
Brinskele: Yeah. I think this is going to make a big change there, because of you, and the women, and the families in the photos, too. I know that you’ve done other exhibits and you said you’ve always done series, and I wanted to know, what other things have you photographed before this?
Sherer: My very first documentary project was in the 90s, and I photographed people with disabilities. It was a series–actually, the exhibit was at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is where Living in Limbo opened as well. It was during the 90s, which, many of you may know, that was the, kind of the civil rights movement, that was when things were happening for people with disabilities legally and socially. So I did that project then, and I’ll brag a little bit and say it became a book and it won a first place IPPY for books that–for inspiration and I got an award from Boston University for books that affect social change. So that was my very first project and then I’ve also done long term survivors of HIV, and then teenagers, my favorite. That’s been an ongoing thing because my sisters have been kind enough to have a continual supply of teenagers.
[Laughter]
Brinskele: I wasn’t sure if you were kidding or not when you first said “teenagers”, which is a favorite.
Sherer: Yeah.
Brinskele: One of the questions that’s been coming up as the exhibit’s been here, it’s actually been here for a while already, is why shoot them in studio rather than on location in their homes or something like that?
[Shows portrait of two women kissing]
Sherer: Well, it was really a privacy issue, because in the very beginning, we–I had such a difficult time getting people to participate. In fact, no–hardly anybody agreed to participate until I met with them, so I just stopped asking. I would just say, “Can I talk to you about this project?” And so there’d be a first meeting just to talk, and then, [shows portrait of two women facing away from the camera] particularly after I had two or three that I could show, that was very helpful. People liked that there was the opportunity to have their backs to the camera. More than one person who planned to have their back to the camera ended up facing the camera when they got there. So, it was privacy. I didn’t want–we didn’t know how this would go, how it would be tolerated in the community, so we didn’t want to put anybody at risk in terms of identifying where they lived.
Brinskele: Let me think, another thing that you talked about was some of these families had never had a portrait done?
Sherer: Yeah, more than one person said they’d never had a family portrait done because they didn’t feel comfortable, in public, acknowledging the nature of the relationship or touching or any of those things. And I let people decide whether to touch or not touch, and everybody touched.
[shows portrait of two women]
Brinskele: And some of the families, some of the couples, had been together for decades that had no photo, right?
Sherer: That’s right.
Brinskele: That’s amazing.
Sherer: Yeah, in fact one of the–in the photograph that if you see the photograph of their backs to the camera, and the little girl has peeps on her shoulder, on her t-shirt–the reason their backs to the camera is that the mother–one of the mothers was fired from her job as a principal because they found out she was gay. So that’s their story. But, they’re ones, I mean their daughter’s about to graduate from high school, and they didn’t have a family portrait. And I’ll tell you, the people who had their backs to the camera, I also photographed facing the camera for their eyes only. So they got family portraits facing forward.
Brinskele: One of the things I think you all might have in common on the panel is some type of either photographic memory or where you kind of, you Carolyn, talked about, kind of, even as a kid, being able to play a reel or a set of photos back of something you’d experienced.
Sherer: Yeah, I mean I remember my father’s in the military and we lived all over the world, just moved a lot, and my memories of my life occur as like visual snapshots. And sometimes, I mean even on a daily basis, if I am at the mall and I see something happen that’s intimate between two people, because that’s really what I’m interested in is intimacy, I’ll play that back in my head. I mean the visual experience is so powerful to me that I’ll just play it over and over and over. You get that kind of rush every time I see in my mind’s eye, even when I was in college, I would learn biology by making little movies in my head of the process.
Brinskele: Betsy, you had mentioned something too about photographic memory?
Kalin: Yeah, I have a photographic memory. But I don’t, I mean, I think I do the same thing with creating movies, and I think that’s actually why I went into doing movies, because I kept seeing all these things over and over in my head. [shows photos of Buddha statues, then a film clip of two women in an intimate embrace, with caption “Hearts Cracked Open”] And, when you think visually and you’re a visual person, it’s really, I mean, it’s challenging in this world, but it’s also a really wonderful thing, because when you experience something, [shows photo of a crowd of women walking] you have this wonderful visual image of it, and then it helps you so much with your art and creation.
Brinskele: And Connie, you had talked to me about it being your main way of expressing yourself, even as a kid, right?
[shows photo of a street lined with snow-covered trees]
Kurtew: Right. Yeah, it’s–well, I grew up in East Germany, so all art was pretty much underground anyway, and you couldn’t really talk about things because everything was not allowed. So you found ways how to express what you’re pissed off at–what’s wrong with the whole thing. So I did a bit of photography. A lot of my friends were playing music or visual arts. We had all this whole underground going on, and it was really, really exciting, actually too. Because, you know, you always had these things–you didn’t want to get caught also. But I was very young, and it was exciting.
Brinskele: One of the other things–Carolyn, you could start with this–is doing photography as a healing thing for you. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Sherer: Yeah well, I mean as I said before, I always learn something and I always grow from the experience, and oddly, when I started this, I didn’t think about the fact that I was going to have to come out of the closet. [laughs] I mean, it’s kind of cra–, it sounds crazy, I know, but I was like, well, I’m going to do this about these other people that are in my community. So, the growth for us and–my partner and I have been together 34 years and we both were living in the closet. [shows photo of Carolyn and her partner] And of course, she had to come out too, and we just have lived with such authenticity in the last year. It’s hard to explain, how much more relaxed you can be when you don’t have to worry that somebody’s going to hurt you because they know you’re gay. I mean, I was on the morning news talking about being a lesbian, so there it is. Everybody knows now. And it was such a relief, and a release and also it was nice for me to learn about the diversity in our community and how the different, particularly intergenerational, groups functioned.
Brinskele: And Betsy, you had talked about that being really true for you too–healing from it.
Kalin: Yeah, in fact the reason that I made my feature documentary, Hearts Cracked Open [plays short clip from the film], was to address issues of sexual healing and healing from chronic pain and just homophobia in the lesbian community. I mean, we didn’t have anything that really addressed all of those issues and put them in a spiritual context. And so, in the process of making this documentary–which, you know, documentaries take forever, it was like four years–it just for me became this total healing process because I live with chronic illness and, in doing that, my pain started to get better, I started feeling better, and it’s just been like this continual growth process.
Brinskele: Connie, did you have any experience with using photography kind of as a healing thing for you?
Kurtew: Well, closure-wise, probably yeah a lot of it, but not like–I had not similar experiences.
Brinskele: I wanted to ask Carolyn, you talked about kind of having the African American community–you had to kind of break into that community. And how did that happen?
Sherer: Well, I will say part of the African-American–the reason in Birmingham that it’s difficult to access the African American community is that there is such a strong link to the church, and the African American church is very conservative in general, and I know I’m generalizing, but that’s in general. I finally got one couple to participate, and it was through a Caucasian couple, a younger couple, so it was a young black couple that I got involved. And then, once I had a photograph of them, then if I could bring people up to the studio and say, “Will you just talk to me?” and they would see the photograph, then they would say, “You know, that’s respectful and, yeah, I want a photograph like that of my girlfriend and I to hang in the living room” because I gave everybody a print. And so that’s how I did it. It was just one person at a time.
Brinskele: Did you have other experiences with other projects? And also–this is for the whole panel–have you had struggles with getting people to actually be in your photos or in your films?
Sherer: I’ll just say one thing about that. When I did the project about people with disabilities, every single person that I asked said yes. So, it was a completely different experience this time when, I would say, almost none of my friends participated in my project. And I will also say that there are some participants in the audience, so if anybody wants to talk to them, feel free. They’re happy to answer any questions if you have questions about what it was like to be on the other side of the camera.
Brinskele: So, would either one of you like to speak about–?
Kalin: Yeah I mean, you have to get your subjects to trust you. So, I think with both Chained and Hearts Cracked Open, which are documentaries, you just have to let the people know what your intention is and what you’re going to do and how respectful you’re going to be of their stories and who they are. So I think that it just–it always takes convincing for people to let themselves be that vulnerable and just put themselves in front of other people. So that’s what I found.
Kurtew: And for me, it’s really interesting. It’s almost like I live in this little bubble in San Diego now, in Hillcrest, because I have people–I have actually so many people that wanted to participate that I have to say, “You know, we have to do it next month. I have no time.” They’re just all for it.
Brinskele: That’s nice.
Kalin: That’s true. We do live in California, where there’s a lot of people who want to be in front of the camera.
[laughter]
Brinskele: That’s a good problem to have and probably one Carolyn hasn’t often experienced. , Let me see. One of the things Connie had mentioned was she’s worked in different fields, not just as a photographer. And I asked her about her struggles being a lesbian photographer, and she said, “I’ve actually had more struggles as a woman, even, than just being a lesbian.” And so I’d love you to all talk about–maybe address that and start with Connie.
Kurtew: Yeah, but photography–it’s probably even more out there, but also I’ve worked in the IT world, and it’s all male-dominated. And, like with photography, it’s really like–and I have friends that do it with me. If you do red carpet events, these guys, they just step on you. They push you out of the way because they really want this picture, and it's sometimes frustrating. You just have to, I don’t know, get a little bit harder yourself too and just [flexes muscles]–I guess, yeah.
[laughs]
Kalin: Yeah, I started in mainstream film, working my way up as PA, production coordinator, assistant director, and I loathed it. I just–I mean some of the guys are cool, but just the upper echelon–women are, they still–it’s so frustrating today. The statistics are horrible about women who are directors. So I just decided, you know what, screw this, I’m going to do documentaries [laughs] and be an activist and do what I want to do and not have to deal with that. So that’s been–and so then the biggest struggle is financial. But I don’t have to deal with the guys who are jerks anymore.
Sherer: I would say that being a woman has been an asset to me in my work. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like it was an issue. Because my work is about intimacy and documentary and being with people and shared humanity, I think being a woman may be an advantage, if anything. And I just do fine art. I don’t do commercial work, so, that would be a different experience.
Brinskele: One of the things I’ve experienced working at the archives is any time a woman donates her history and she says I was the first woman in this field or the only woman in this field, there’s just horror stories to follow after you hear that. So it’s nice that Carolyn actually had it as an asset, being a woman. We don’t hear that very often. Another thing I really–the reason I really wanted to do this panel was because I was, telling Connie more than anybody else, that women all struggle with a lot of the same things, but we don’t always talk to each other about them. And so I was really looking forward to this–where you can all talk about some of the common struggles that you have. Betsy, I’d love you to talk a little bit about your work and what you’re doing now.
Kalin: Oh, Okay! I’m working on a feature documentary project, that’s hopefully for PBS. It’s a documentary that looks at Boyle Heights in East LA and its multicultural history in light of the U.S. today. And I’m kind of using it as a microcosm and a role model. And then I also have a film that I produced called Click that will be at festivals, which is a lesbian comedy. So it’s back into fiction for me. And I’m also hoping to get a feature, so a lesbian feature, going this year.
Brinskele: Great! Connie, I know you’ve been shooting a lot of lesbian events in the last couple years. Could you talk about what you do?
Kurtew: Well, I try to, especially for the community, work a lot, so a lot of women festivals. It’s a lot of fun also, not just work [laughs]. Yeah red carpet, so wherever I can help out and I try to do that.
Brinskele: Did you ever dream when you were a young girl that you would be at Dinah Shore Weekend shooting nothing but lesbians all weekend?
Kurtew: No, but it’s fantastic!
[laughs]
Brinskele: Shoot, I had one more question. Oh, I know. I was wondering if each of you would take turns–Carolyn, maybe first–talking about, if you had any mentors, anybody you really followed from the time you were young, or maybe in your early twenties, or whatever.
Sherer: I think the very–well, there were a couple. Judy Dater and Mary Ellen Mark were my two earliest heroes. And then also, oddly, Irving Penn. I liked all of their different styles of portraiture, and I really think, you know, when I look way back at my whole body of work, not just what’s upstairs, I can certainly tease out influences from each of them. Mary Ellen Mark–what I loved about her work was–well, it sort of gave me the idea that you could do documentary portraits. And Tiny, her series Tiny, just never left me. It was so powerful to me, and I’ve actually taken a couple workshops with her, so she really meant a lot to me. And I took a workshop with Judy Dater as well. And just that kind of stark, in your face portraiture that she did in the 70s, I love that. And then Irving Penn–I can remember the first time I saw his work–just the huge impact and the dir–, you know, kind of simple forms and direct gaze, I loved all that. So those would be, I would say, those are the three that I just fell in love with early on.
Kalin: I loved Agnes Varda. So growing up, I just thought she was incredible, and the way that she was able to mix documentary and fiction and experimental, and everything. So she was–and then I got to meet her, I was like in heaven–so that was a big influence. And then when I first graduated from college, I moved to San Francisco, and I worked with Jane Wagner and Tina Di Feliciantonio there. And I just–that was what gave me the impetus to go into documentary, when I saw their work on–they did Girls Like Us. And I was an intern on that and did all of the transcribing and helping with editing, and it was just an amazing project.
Brinskele: Connie, any major influences when you were a kid?
Kurtew: Yeah. [laughs] A little bit different. For me, it was Bob Dylan. [laughter] So he actually helped me out to get out of East Germany. I mean, it was still after the Wall came down, but he actually helped me through a lot of hard times. And, then later on, since I moved to San Diego, it was Victoria Tischler-Blue. [shows photo of Victoria]. She’s an old bassist from The Runaways, the first punk band. And, she’s a filmmaker and a photographer, and she calls me sometimes and says, “What are you doing? Why don’t you do this?” And so she keeps me on my toes.
Brinskele: I think it’s really interesting that you all have met at least one person that you really admired. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. A lot of people never do, so that’s great. Okay, well that was wonderful! Thank you all so much for coming.
[Applause]
[caption: Lesbian Photographers Panel. June 1, 2013. West Hollywood, California. Sponsored by City of West Hollywood, One City, One Pride Queer Arts Festival, weho.org in conjunction with June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives. mazerlesbianarchives.org]
[caption: Moderated by Angela Brinskele, Director of Communications, June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives] [caption: Panelists: Carolyn Sherer, carolynsherer.com, livinginlimbo.org; Betsy Kalin, itchybeeproductions.com; Connie Kurtew, kurtewphotography.com]
[caption: Video Producer/Editor, Rosemary Leeson; Producer Assistant, Diane Abato; Camera Operators, Rosemary Leeson, Angela BroOkayays]
[caption: Special Thanks. Mike Che, Festival Coordinator, City of West Hollywood, June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives. All rights to art work belong to the Artists. Photographs Courtesy of Carolyn Sherer, Betsy Kalin, Connie Kurtew. FIlm Clip of Hearts Cracked Open, 2008. Courtesy of Betsy Kalin. This video presentation is provided by KleisTV.com, a division of Groovation, Inc. Copyright © 2013 All Rights Reserved.]
[END OF VIDEO]
Photographers Carolyn Sherer, Betsy Kalin and Connie Kurtew discuss their work, influences and challenges in a program taking place June 1, 2013 and is part of West Hollywood's One City, One Pride Queer Arts Festival.
Angela Brinskele, is the Moderator and Director of Communications at the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, in collaboration with the City of West Hollywood. This program is in conjunction with the traveling photography exhibit, Living in Limbo: Lesbian Families in the Deep South, by Carolyn Sherer.
Please visit and learn more about all the contributors to this event: http://www.MazerlLesbianArchives.org/ http://LivingInLimbo.org/ http://ItchyBeeProductions.com/ http://KurtewPhotography.com/
Video produced by http://KleisTV.com/
Interviewee: Carolyn Sherer
Interviewee: Betsy Kalin
Interviewee: Connie Kurtew
Interviewer: Angela Brinskele
Transcriber: Janice C.
Transcriber: Mikhail Z.
Formatter: Serena R.
Recording Date: June 1, 2013
Release Date: July 19, 2013
Location: West Hollywood, California
Interview Length: 00:25:29