Here Come The Dykes: A short documentary recounts the alternative history of photography by JEB (Joan E. Biren) with lesbians as central protagonists in The Dyke Show, produced by The New Yorker films.
00:00This is something I've been imagining for a very long time.
00:20Okay, I'm ready.
00:23You ready?
00:25Let's do it.
00:26Let's do it.
00:27Here comes the dunks.
00:28Here comes the dunks.
00:30Here comes the dunks.
00:31Here comes the dunks.
00:32Here comes the dunks.
00:33Here comes the dunks.
00:34The restored and revived Dyke Show Live.
00:37I started touring at a time when lesbians had no place in society and no known history.
00:55I wanted us to feel like we belonged in a bigger world.
00:58We needed to connect to a past so that we could see a future.
01:05It is a dyke revival, so I want to hear you hootin' and hollerin' and let's get going.
01:14Here come the dykes!
01:15Here come the dykes!
01:16Here come the dykes!
01:17Here come the dykes!
01:18Here come the dykes!
01:19Here come the dykes!
01:21Here come the likes!
01:23Here come the likes!
01:28Here come the likes!
01:44Testing, testing, testing.
01:47This is a condensed version of a two and a half hour slideshow I presented live at least 80 times between 1979 and 1984.
01:59The slides here are as they appeared in the original shows.
02:04All of the words you'll hear were part of the original narrations except for the words I just said.
02:12Clear. This is probably a good time to tell you I cry all the time and it's quite alright with me.
02:22Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
02:25What would you like me to do?
02:27Just stay cool.
02:29I'm cool, baby.
02:33I'm so grateful to the museum for everything you've done.
02:37Everything I asked for and more came true.
02:42So, it's a dream.
02:45I mentioned being seen makes them better.
02:48When you discover photographs like these, how do you know if the women are good friends, sisters, lovers, and how do you name them?
03:04When I first presented this show to a live audience, I was 35 years old.
03:13Those like me, who had same-sex desires and were gender non-conforming, weren't part of much that was our own.
03:23To have a shared heritage, we had to fill in the blanks with our imaginations.
03:32I started deciphering the codes.
03:35I couldn't borrow books from the Library of Congress.
03:39So, I smuggled them into the bathroom and photographed images in the bathroom stalls.
03:47That's how the slides were made.
03:50Lots and lots of slides.
03:53Over 400 images by and of lesbians, which is, I believe, the largest collection like this.
04:01Then, it was time to hit the road in my extremely untrustworthy VW van.
04:10I spent five years traveling to over 80 cities presenting the Dyke Show.
04:17It was a miracle, truly, that I survived as a lesbian photographer.
04:25I was supported by the lesbians who came to see the shows and the amazing women who produced them.
04:34The 93 or 123 or however many lesbians came to the shows may never have been in a space with that many lesbians before.
04:49It feels like coming home.
04:52There's something very tender about it that's reminding us of our, a little bit of our youth, of those coming out moments.
05:00The being together, looking together, thinking together, that was so special, and I think I was really here tonight.
05:09Hey! Look at you! You look fantastic! This is so exciting! You sold out so fast! Everybody wants to be here!
05:18I grew up a baby Dyke, and it was the Dykes and the Queers who taught me how to dance,
05:25who taught me how to dress, who taught me how to flirt.
05:28She's the bomb! She's the bomb!
05:33And I carry that with me every day.
05:36Unbelievable! Is this unbelievable?
05:40You look so great!
05:43Images I had never seen before. Images I had seen but not perceived.
05:48It's because of this need to connect with our past that this performance of the Dyke Show, the first in almost four decades,
05:57will enter the permanent collection of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art as a video work by Jeb.
06:11I'd like you to imagine never once having seen an image of two women kissing each other on the lips.
06:20The Dyke Show was a tool for making space where its viewers could feel belonging and also gather to debate and question the ethics of lesbian representation and how images could change both queer cultures and the larger straight world.
06:33Please help me in welcoming Joan Byron Jeb.
06:38Hi!
07:00Hi.
07:04Hi.
07:07From a young age, I couldn't keep my hands off my girlfriends,
07:13no matter what clothes they made me wear.
07:17I wanted to see a photograph of two women kissing.
07:21I didn't think any existed.
07:23I didn't even have a camera, so I borrowed one.
07:27Then I held the camera out at arm's length, kissed my lover Sharon,
07:32and made what I call my first lesbian photograph.
07:43The Dyke Show started when I was working on eye-to-eye portraits of lesbians,
07:48published in 1979.
07:50This was the first openly lesbian photography book ever that we know of.
07:58If you know differently, let us know,
08:01but we've been saying this for a while,
08:03and nobody has complained about it,
08:05so I feel, you know, like I can say that now.
08:10The Dyke Show, me and the audience together,
08:15we're materializing a queer world that had not existed before.
08:26Lesbians were central in this world.
08:30We were all connecting to a shared past
08:32and to each other in the present,
08:36creating memories and community.
08:39The images we see every day affect our ideas about what a lesbian is.
08:47I find them pretty appalling.
08:51I think there are two opposite stereotypes.
08:55One is the cold, plastic playmate.
09:00The women are always young, blonde, white, slim, and blurry.
09:05The other stereotype is the lesbian as vampire.
09:10The idea that something hot and passionate must end in violence and blood.
09:18But men don't understand about bleeding.
09:22If men bled every month, they'd just be dead.
09:26One of my favorite signs this summer at the Seneca Peace Camp was
09:33because war is menstruation envy.
09:40If we create our own images of lesbians,
09:43we won't have to put up with male fantasies.
09:48And my basketball team is telling me that they're playing a game now.
09:56I'm sorry about that.
10:01Go Terps.
10:02There we go.
10:03Okay.
10:05You know, I'm a dyke.
10:08Uh, but...
10:10Slideshow is, it's not a show to watch.
10:14It's a community that's created.
10:16Like, the act of doing the slideshow is bringing people together
10:19and reacting and picking up on the coded messages in the images, too.
10:25Like, you know, the dyke's laughing at the same things, getting the same jokes.
10:30Almost all the photographers I will talk about are from the U.S.
10:35Here's Johnston in the white hat.
10:37She is flashing us a signal across the years from exactly the right place in her lap.
10:44I think that's a clue.
10:50I have a big hunch.
10:51I have a big hunch on this one and would love to get rid of this question mark.
10:56The stance is generally characterized by leaning against things.
11:04It's a little sloppy.
11:06So what is it?
11:11When women are self-presenting not for male consumption,
11:15we're relaxed and at home in our bodies.
11:19We get comfortable.
11:20And that sense of, like, building community and creating community
11:25through the photographs is so profound.
11:29If you are a queer photographer born before 1961,
11:36please stand up.
11:38Throughout history, lesbians have recognized each other
11:49by the look in their eyes.
11:52Kate Millett wrote,
11:55Watch their eyes.
11:57A look of freedom and autonomy we have never seen before.
12:02They, with the new thing in their eyes,
12:04looking back at you and beyond
12:07because they're the future and they know it.
12:11I'm a lesbian and it was really cool to see all these older, like, dykes, like, come all together.
12:22I don't think I've ever seen that before.
12:24And as someone who grew up, like, very closeted
12:27and, like, never being able to feel like I was a lesbian
12:31and, like, all these different kind of people,
12:33I just felt, like, really at home.
12:35And I've been a fan of Jeb's work for a long time
12:37and it was really cool to see, like, all of this come together
12:40and, like, knowing there's, like, a history
12:42and other people and lesbians before me.
12:45And it's really awesome.
12:46When lesbians start to photograph lesbians,
12:52we begin to get a different image of women
12:55that is more real, more powerful, and more vibrant.
13:00We start to see the true variety of who we are,
13:04that women come in different colors, shapes, and sizes.
13:12There are always going to be pressures to erase us.
13:16I hope that we will never become invisible again.
13:25When times get tough,
13:27we have to not let go of our belief in each other
13:31and in our power.
13:34I hope that we will hold on to our visions
13:37of how the world really should be.
13:41Don't forget about the workshop for photographers tomorrow
