Lydia Garnett pays homage to the relationship between hair and Butch identity

Impressed by the black and white portraits which have traditionally adorned barbershop partitions, Garnett’s collaboration with barber Zara Toppin and curator Lucy Nurnberg is “about belief and love between Butches, as a lot as fashion”

Buzz cuts and pores and skin fades. Undercuts, mullets and crops. Hair that’s sculpted, bleached, slicked or shaved. There isn’t one butch identity, however the ritual of a haircut is a shared expertise that embodies greater than recent traces and a good look. For a lot of Butch folks, their hair features as a construction of identity. It’s a political act as a lot as a private expression. It connects you to your group and is a instrument for pleasure and energy. An LGBTQ+ barbershop permits how you are feeling on the inside to match your exterior; it’s a area the place you don’t have to clarify your self – you’ll be able to simply present up, really feel seen, and be cared for. 

The idea for Shut Shave, a brand new exhibition by Lydia Garnett at present on present at Sunbury Studios in East London, was born in the barbershop. Along with barber Zara Toppin and curator Lucy Nurnberg, they determined to pay homage to the relationship between hair and Butch identity impressed by the conventional black and white portraits which have traditionally adorned barbershop partitions. “We’re calling it the Butch Renaissance,” says Garnett, playfully. “I do know a variety of butches residing their greatest life. Every thing is at their fingertips, and they’ve this magical energy. This shoot is about belief and love between Butches as a lot as fashion.”

On the floor, Shut Shave centres pleasure and affirmation. The putting portraits reveal the energy and empowerment of a brand new era of Butches which might be defiant and unapologetic. Upon nearer look, the photos additionally describe the tenderness and care inside a group traditionally misunderstood and discriminated towards exterior the queer group and from inside.

Butch is an aesthetic and identity that conveys an angle that’s inconceivable to disguise, which, along with its rejection of the male gaze, creates a menace to the patriarchy. This has resulted in Butch girls bearing the brunt of homophobia for many years. Printed in 1928, Radcliffe Corridor’s The Properly of Loneliness – a semi-autobiographical novel wherein a feminine protagonist longs to be accepted as a person amongst her friends and lovers – was made unlawful in Britain below the obscene publications act. Butches in the 40s and 50s risked being arrested and dropping their jobs and properties for carrying males’s garments. It went past overwhelming societal pressures to seem bodily palatable to the heterosexual majority – these people had been combating for his or her lives and the proper to dwell overtly. 

Regardless of the social, political and cultural repression, Butch pioneers like author Gertrude Stein, painter Romaine Brooks and activist Stormé DeLarverie paved the means for gender non-conforming folks in the early a part of the twentieth century. It wasn’t till the 90s that Butches started to infiltrate the mainstream tradition when a shedding of cultural prescriptions about what it meant to occupy your intercourse began to emerge. Trailblazers like comic Lea DeLaria, poet Eileen Myles, author Roxane Homosexual, and mannequin Jenny Shimizu gained visibility of their respective fields, whereas the Butch aesthetic started to be appropriated in trend, cinema and TV. Photographically, Catherine Opie’s Being and Having and Phyllis Christopher’s Darkish Room provided radical creative celebrations of the tradition that had by no means beforehand gone unseen.

“Shut Shave is about prioritising the Butch gaze. It’s about connecting with the gaze wanting again at you. It’s for the group to see themselves”

“We’re at all times going to look again and reference queer tradition from our previous,” says Garnett. “It’s inspiring to [now] see folks simply placing themselves first, residing their fact and not giving any consideration to what mainstream tradition thinks. That Butch confidence is engaging to me. Shut Shave is about prioritising the Butch gaze. It’s about connecting with the gaze wanting again at you. It’s for the group to see themselves.”

This notion of proximity is palpable in Garnett’s brief movie, Elio, which accompanies the exhibition. With the hum of the clippers and shards of hair effervescing throughout the body, the senate expertise of buzzing your hair comes to life. The camera occupies the mirror’s perspective as Elio tracks their progress. “The movie is about taking a look at your reflection and liking what you see,” says Garnett. “It’s a transferring picture portrait that captures the satisfying sensation of buzzing your hair.” For Garnett, it was essential to reference the DIY mode of self-care that represents what number of butch, dyke and trans-masc folks dwell their lives.

What’s radical about Shut Shave is the way it irradicates the lone-wolf stereotype of Butch folks and as an alternative photos a extra nuanced story of deep camaraderie and care. For Garnett, making this work has been important on many ranges, most profoundly as a result of it’s the first time their work has turn out to be intrinsically linked with their identity journey. “I’m exploring issues in my private life via the work, and that’s a brand new expertise for me,” they are saying. “Beforehand, it’s at all times been about creating for a consumer and making an attempt to please others. Shut Shave is the first physique of labor I’ve made for myself, and to give again to my group feels superb.”

Shut Shave by Lydia Garnett will be seen by appointment at Sunbury Studios till 17 November 2023.