Features Overview
An Artist’s Video Choir Tells a Story about Black and Queer Visibility
June 2022
“ ‘Quantum Choir emerged from this question: What is my line in the sand? What would push my limits? How do I lean into discomfort? What would it look like to make a project addressing my greatest source of vulnerability? It was clear immediately that this meant singing because I’ve had this lifelong shame about my singing voice.’ “
Eye to Eye, hand to hand: The enduring impact of photographer JEB’s portraits of lesbian lives
July 2021
“Looking, talking, bathing, marching, playing, protesting, celebrating: JEB photographed it all. Lovers, legends, friends, strangers: JEB documented them all. Radically inclusive at a time when there were fewer colours in our flag and letters in our acronym, photographer and filmmaker JEB (Joan E. Biren) has dedicated her life to documenting lesbian lives.”
Do Patricia Highsmith Novels Make Good Films?
T Magazine (book club)
April 2021
“There are many reasons Highsmith’s psychological thrillers lend themselves so well to cinema. They are suspenseful and dramatic … there is often a strong current of sexual tension … an expressed desire to belong to the world of the wealthy and elite. Her characters are also granted charm, uncanny intelligence and first-rate seduction skills, as well as murderous urges, and are thus as villainous as they are entrancing.”
Lock Down, Rise Up, Make Food
Food and Wine
June 2020
“Crawford—refreshingly forthright, fierce, and funny—was a stand-out contestant on season six of MasterChef Canada in 2019…. I’ve turned to this self-identified ‘food freak’ to help me ponder the question of Queer Food. ‘Trying to describe Queer Food feels as slippery to me as trying to describe my gender; it’s always getting away from me.’ ”
The Renegades
T Magazine
April 2020
“‘BUTCH’ HAS LONG been the name we’ve given a certain kind — that kind — of lesbian. The old adage applies: You know her when you see her. She wears men’s clothing, short hair, no makeup. Butch is an aesthetic, but it also conveys an attitude and energy. Both a gender and a sexuality, butchness is about the body but also transcends it.”
Photos of Lesbian Lives Meant to Inspire a Movement
The New York Times Lens Blog
2019
”Officially called ‘Lesbian Images in Photography: 1850-the present,’ the ‘Dyke Show,’ as it was popularly known, offered an alternative history of photography. It included JEB and others like her. At once pedagogical, political and practical — JEB typically paired her slide show with workshops — the show offered new ways of looking and of being seen.”
Escaping Homophobia to Live ‘Ordinary Lives With Extraordinary Love’
The New York Times Lens Blog
January 2019
“‘Between the Blocks’ began by chance: In 2013, the photographer Anna Liminowicz was visiting a friend in Gdansk, Poland, who was to be her subject for a photography assignment at the University of Warsaw. This friend had guests: Honorata, 41; her daughter Natal and her partner, Agnieszka, 31. Anna immediately felt at home with them, drawn to their ‘rawness, warmth and honesty.’”
An Intimate Exploration of a Queer Love Story
The New York Times Lensblog
2018
“The book title announces the way we remain estranged from and strange to our love(r): When We Were Strangers. The past tense of the title is cannily deceptive, highlighting a key tension, since that ‘when’ is perpetually now: We were, are, and will be strange to and for each other. Love queers time. That oddness, mystery and space between keeps love collaborative and keeps the story moving.’”