Despite Straight Lines

I met the photographer Sophia Wallace at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association annual conference over Labor Day weekend in San Diego. For reasons I do not even recall, I asked her and fellow attendee Johnny Diaz if they had watched Logo's gender-bender reality show "TransGeneration." At the end of the conversation Sophia -- (perhaps) sensing my (perhaps) unusual interest in the subject -- handed me a compact disc of a project she had done called Bois and Dykes. I took it home and was intrigued by her photographic examination of women who live within a broad spectrum of identities ranging from dyke and butch, to tomboy, aggressive, and transgender.

In an interview with OutImpact.com, Wallace explained how the project came about: "The Bois and Dykes project was inspired by my experience as an open lesbian living in New York City. I was disturbed by the limited, and often butch-phobic ways lesbians were portrayed in the media, and I wanted to create a visual documentary of my community that felt truthful. I wanted to show butch women and trans men the way that I see them: as incredibly sexy, courageous, beautiful, and powerful. I also wanted to inspire audiences who weren't queer to look at my subjects and challenge their preconceived notions of what it means to be 'butch.'" Click here to view/learn more about her work.