Collected Item: “Westside Butch”
Your Name
Jo Birdsell
Your Pronouns
they/them
Instagram handle, if any
@jo.birdsell
Work Title
Westside Butch
Work Year (We are not accepting images older than 5 years)
2025
[Image Rights] Do you confirm that you hold the rights to this image?
Yes
[Eligibility] The Curve Photo Contest proudly centers and uplifts people who identify as lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer women and nonbinary people. Please share how you self-identify, using language that feels most accurate to you. Feel free to include all intersections of your identity. (Examples: lesbian, trans person of color, Latinx queer woman, radical faery, butch, etc.)
Nonbinary Butch Lesbian
[Artist Statement] Tell us more about your photo by sharing a brief artist statement OR answering this prompt: "This is what being ______ means to me..." (Max. 100 words)
Westside Butch explores the connection between the traditional masculinities of my youth and the queer Butch masculinities of my present. Throughout the photo series, I deploy the iconography of low-income, white masculinities — those masculinities of my hometown — through the staging of guns, woodworking materials, ladders, yard tools and more. I complicate these symbols by photographing them alongside lesbian (rather than male) figures. I’m interested in how the iconography of hegemonic masculinity becomes subversive when placed in relation to the lesbian form, and how this subversion works to create a new, uniquely queer form of masculinity. Westside Butch requires me to step into the masculinities of my youth— to, at once, celebrate my queerness, and honor the men who raised me.
[Visual Description] Describe your photo so we can provide alt-text. Example: "Two women holding hands and smiling as they walk in a pride parade, surrounded by rainbow flags."
A Butch sits in their underwear in front of a clothes line. They smoke a cigarette and shave their head. Behind them, a fence falls, slowly.
[Agreement] In the event that you win the 2026 Curve Photo Contest, do you consent to having your photograph printed for the sole purpose of displaying at The Curve Foundation's one-day event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA) during Lesbian Visibility Week? The Curve Foundation will cover printing costs, but will not cover costs for mailing the print after the event ends.
Yes
[Agreement] Do you consent to The Curve Foundation storing, sharing, and using this image and its description as we deem appropriate, including disseminating on our social media, website, and Curve Archive and Curve Quarterly?
Yes
[Agreement] By checking 'I understand' below, I acknowledge that this contest upholds values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I confirm that my submission does not contain anti-LGBTQ+ or other discriminatory, hateful, or exclusionary content.
I understand