Truant: Photographs, 1970-1979

by Barbara Hammer

Throughout the 1970s, filmmaker Barbara Hammer toured the United States, Africa, and Europe, making film after film about women and the lesbian experience, both of which had seldom been seen by a woman, for women on screen before. She made a slew of now-legendary experimental films, including Sis­ters! (1973), Dyketactics (1974), Multiple Orgasm (1976), Sappho (1978), and Double Strength (1978), more or less inventing lesbian cinema at a time when such material had largely been relegated to the pornographic imagination of male artists and filmmakers. During this prolific period, Hammer photographed her travels, her lovers, moments of community and kinship between her collaborators on set, private and public performances, friends, strangers. Through these photographs, Hammer explodes traditional notions of female sexuality by showing it for what it is: complex, messy, abstract, human.

152 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 2017

Reviews

[Noor Phlips · Rating 5 out of 5]

“and a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society…lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude, a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economical obligation… a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. “

LETTERLIJK! Dit is wat ik bedoel wanneer ik zeg dat mijn gender lesbisch is. Gewoon de woorden uit mijn brein gehaald en neergepend zonder dat ik ervan wist.

Ik moet dit boek echt ergens vinden om te kopen, want ik MOET dit hebben!

[Tate Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredible book! How cool to be able to travel back in time and see this beautiful community.