Author | Christiane Nickel
Serenity, sensuality, innately tailored elegance – these are some of the words and phrases that come to mind when studying Meg Allen’s portrait series Butch. This photo-based documentary explores the butch aesthetic, identity, and presentation of female masculinity as it stands in 2013-14. From the spontaneity of everyday life to the intimate, uncanny moments within the domestic sphere, this documentary series is a personal, political, as well as sartorial, compendium celebrating the artist’s friends and the idea of unconventional beauty.
Allen found it necessary to photograph the interiors of her subjects, which recalled for me the raw elegance of East German photographers like Arnos Fischer and Sibylle Bergmanns work, mixed with the sartorial nuances of Mr. Porter. There is also something very cinematic about her portraits as if a story or dialogue are about to unfold.
I had the opportunity to chat with the Oakland-based artist asking about the nature and process of her work.
“Growing up I wasn’t really exposed all that much to butch women so when I did encounter them, I was fascinated with how they dressed, carried themselves, and this was coming out of the 90s/00s in Oakland which wasn’t as open as it is today. Burgeoning social media sites like Facebook and Friendster became my version of a fashion magazine and a youth culture, finding a space to fit in. Some years ago I started photographing my friends. They were all non-conventional beauties that I wanted to portray. I just wanted a room covered with butches.”
After studying English, Meg started working as a carpenter but has been photographing since the age of 14. By the beginning of March of 2013, she was working on professional portraits and eventually started photographing her friends. Some were spontaneous like the lead image of her friend Michelle with Meg’s god baby who she asked to hold her for a quick minute, while others were planned, like the pregnant butch piece which quickly went viral after posting.
Implicitly the word “butch” is fraught with multiple histories, meanings and cultural contexts. This term is slowly becoming obsolete and amorphous while concepts like masculine presenting, masculine-of-center, and gender queer have done the fine-tuning. Like the ever growing changes, complexities of gender studies, pronouns, and labeling, Allen continues to faultlessly challenge while celebrating butch culture.
