Collected Item: “On Our Backs”
Your Name
Mattie Provost
Your Pronouns
they/them
Instagram handle, if any
mattieeprovosttt
Work Title
On Our Backs
Work Year (We are not accepting images older than 5 years)
2023
[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.)
Non-binary, Asian 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)
Conceptions of nature, most specifically in the iconography of the American cowboy, have been catered and crafted to symbolize the “ideal masculinity” of a man who “embodies the most precious values of the” United States. This photo is motif of the queer sublime and a theoretical landscape of the wilderness beyond the confines of rigid masculinity, but also draws inspiration from 1970s-1990s lesbian erotic photography. Here, I reconceptualize the cowboy in the traditions of pastoral representations of male same-sex eroticism, as a way to “trans” the cowboy (for lack of better words). It is the gender-outlaw that encapsulates the American cowboy. This image is a representation of the past, but is also a take on visualizing a queer futurity—imaging a world without gender policing and a freedom of performance and the erotic.
[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."
The back pockets of two lesbians' jeans; one slips their hand in the other's back pocket.
[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