{"id":501193,"date":"2026-03-29T03:58:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T03:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/501193\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T03:58:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T03:58:32","slug":"dykes-a-new-photo-book-celebrating-queer-multiplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/501193\/","title":{"rendered":"Dykes: a New Photo Book Celebrating Queer Multiplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily Lipson discusses the concepts and collaborators that make up her inaugural photo book, Dykes, a celebration of both her community and the inevitability of changeMarch 26, 2026<\/p>\n

Shortly after conducting an interview with US photographer Emily Lipson \u2013 about her debut photo book, Dykes \u2013 I received a follow-up email from the image-maker, returning to a point she\u2019d been reflecting on during our call. \u201cI think it\u2019s a radical thing to change your mind,\u201d she wrote. \u201c[That] it\u2019s important to always be OK to change your viewpoint on something. That\u2019s really it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Change is a key theme in the book \u2013 perhaps the key theme, alongside its titular concept. Featuring portraits of around 50 subjects, alongside still lifes of bugs and tampons (both vessels of transformation, it could be argued), the project embodies transcience in a number of ways. First, it reflects Lipson\u2019s own evolution as an artist, and a person, over the last five years: the photographs have been compiled from her personal and professional archive, and range from intimate snapshots of exes and close friends to imagery made for fashion editorials or commercial shoots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of Dykes\u2019 subjects are people with whom Lipson shares a personal connection, and an affinity with the term \u201cdyke\u201d \u2013 a word she says she was once afraid of, but now wears with pride. \u201cIt\u2019s when you find people whose life story you really have a kinship with,\u201d she says of those who made their way onto Dykes\u2019 pages, and whom she views as collaborators as much as subjects. \u201cInitially, I didn\u2019t know I was making a book, so there was a lot of reaching back out to people years later and saying, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m doing this project with this work. It\u2019s called Dykes. This is why I\u2019m calling it that. Do you identify with the word? And if you do, would you want to be in it?\u2019 Almost everyone said yes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As such, the publication presents a refreshingly broad, albeit microcosmic, spectrum of dyke identity \u2013 one that resists monolithic interpretation. \u201c\u2018Dyke\u2019 is not a singular thing,\u201d Lipson\u2019s artist statement reads. \u201cThis community is not narrow or unified or clean. It includes cis lesbians, transmasculine men, transfeminine women, nonbinary people, people of colour, white people \u2013 people who love each other, people who don\u2019t, people who will never agree.\u201d And this was something she actively sought to showcase.<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"DykesPhotography by Emily Lipson<\/p>\n

With the book\u2019s unifying concept in place, Lipson left herself deliberately free to play with different formats and aesthetics. Dykes features analogue and digital photography, from fashion stories to striking close-ups of faces and body parts to scenic group shots that convey Lipson\u2019s appreciation for the raw, candid approach of Nan Goldin<\/a> and early Wolfgang Tillmans<\/a>. It features AI intervention (the photographer asked AI to give a number of her subjects \u201clesbian hairstyles\u201d, resulting in mohawks, short crops and more surprising, avant-garde interpretations), collage and Sharpie scrawls, and prints painted with colourful dyes: intervention as a form of change, if you will.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lipson also gave herself the time and space to change her mind, a luxury that is rarely, if ever, afforded in the realm of fashion photography. \u201cOften, we get commissioned to do shoots and the edit is due two days later, with the finals due a week or two after that,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s such a tight, abbreviated timeline for the way most artists need to work.\u201d With Dykes \u2013 which was designed and produced in collaboration with AnOther Magazine\u2019s art director, SJ Todd \u2013 the aim was to keep returning to the work, \u201cto age with it,\u201d in Lipson\u2019s words. \u201cAny decision I made, like making an edit, I would go back a week, two weeks later and be like, \u2018OK, now I feel differently. Now my eye is seeing something else,\u2019 I knew I would love the outcome if, by the final edit, I\u2019d seen a picture ten months out of the year, and decided to keep it in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book itself invites slow engagement, its imagery nuanced and leaving room for interpretation. \u201cThis is not a feminine person, but she\u2019s wearing pink underwear,\u201d Lipson says, pointing to a photograph of a topless figure, sprawled nonchalantly on the grass in cotton underwear. \u201cThis person is wearing heels with men\u2019s work shorts and a basketball uniform on top,\u201d she says, directing my gaze to an atmospheric shot of a model, standing tall and imposing in profile in Lipson\u2019s apartment (pose is frequently the starting point for Lipson\u2019s portraiture, reflecting her early work as a choreographer). \u201cI wanted to document modern butch and femme aesthetics as I see them,\u201d she explains \u2013 another response to the fashion world, and its more binary approach to androgyny.<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"DykesPhotography by Emily Lipson<\/p>\n

Much of what Lipson is hoping to highlight with Dykes and its rich, beautifully rendered portraits is that humans are in a state of flux almost all of the time. Sometimes we try to resist this, to commit ourselves to a specific methodology, perhaps \u2013 initially, Lipson was interested in incorporating AI into her practice, she tells me by way of example, but has now decided to stop using it for environmental reasons \u2013 or, more problematically, to a set ideology or identity. <\/p>\n

But change is, of course, life\u2019s only certainty, and there is joy and liberation in accepting it. As Lipson concludes in her artist statement: \u201cIn looking at this book, I\u2019m asking you to see identity not as a fixed state, and pictures as impermanent but important markers of our constantly transient states. The dyke community is an expansive and ever-shifting group. For many of us, gender isn\u2019t one or the other, nor some tidy combination \u2013 it is evolving, unresolved, without a final resting place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dykes<\/a> by Emily Lipson is published by Antenne Books and is out now. A book signing and talk will take place at Mast Books<\/a> in New York from 6-8 pm on 26 March.\u00a0<\/p>\n