Emily Lipson, Dykes
Gallery / 22 images
I called photographer Emily Lipson in the midst of a personal metamorphosis. She was setting up for a release party, which happened last night in Paris, for her first book, Dykes, distributed by Antenne Books. “I’ve never done a gallery show or a book, so to do both at the same time is true to my personality,” she told me. “I have to do things very much to the extreme.” The book itself is an extreme accomplishment – 220 pages bringing 50 people together to examine lesbian identity, visibility and authorship over time. To follow the Paris launch, there will be a release party in New York next week, which is fitting since the photographer now spends her days between the two cities. “I came to Paris to exit the commercial bubble,” Lipson says. Some photos featured in the book were also shot in London and Los Angeles.
With Dykes, Lipson is cementing herself as an artist who transcends the fashion industry. In her artist statement for the book, which moved between portraiture and fashion, she wrote about being “a firm believer in change”, not as an abstract idea but as something to embody and encourage. “Mostly, it [the book] has been about change over time,” she wrote. “My identity, someone else’s, all of us colliding and ricocheting off one another – messy, painful, kinetic.” Her emphasis on everything and everyone being constantly in flux translates into multiple aesthetics in her work. But she’s not interested in creating aesthetic sameness; she wants to dive deep into themes instead.
Lipson says choosing a topic for her first book was an easy decision. While she used to be afraid of the word “dyke”, it’s now something she wears with tremendous pride. “I want to show the multitude of people that exist in this space,” she told me. The book approaches queerness through an expansive lens. It’s less about defining a community than it is about resisting simplification and exploring identity as a transient state. As she wrote in her artist statement: “We are not one harmonious group holding hands. We are too varied, too imperfect. We’re not a friend group for clout. We’re not a friend group based on a hobby. We’re all merely people, again ricocheting, and aware of each other.”
Below, we spoke to Lipson about Dykes, bugs and change.
How and when did the idea for Dykes come to you?
Emily Lipson: I think a lot of photographers struggle with getting off the hamster wheel of commissioned work at some point and finding themselves not actually making things generated by their own ideas. The quickness of fashion photography can almost feel anticlimactic. And it’s rare that I feel very rewarded by it. With this project, it was 2023 and I was getting out of a relationship. I was essentially just frustrated, waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety because I felt like I had to do this thing. It became so uncomfortable that I had to make a book. I wanted to make something that takes way longer to do and just age with it.
And this is your first book. Why did you want this project to be a book?
Emily Lipson: I have a very stringent commitment to print. An assemblage of photos starts to mean something. And just being a dyke and existing, I don’t resonate with a lot of the narratives in the mainstream media. I started to feel like I wasn’t seeing myself in the things I was consuming. The book honestly happened organically because I had already shot so many partners and friends. I sat down with my archive and started to recontextualise old work, asking myself, ‘When have I shot dykes?’ From there, I started to piece together a body of work that felt like a contemporary vision of butch aesthetics. Also, the play between butch and fem, which I feel like a lot of people don’t talk about. Bringing people together and seeing the side-by-side feels like a community when we don’t have physical records of that in other ways. It just felt important.
What about the name?
Emily Lipson: It’s obviously historically a derogatory term, but, in modern culture, I don’t think people say lesbian as much as they say dyke. It’s normalising and celebrating this reclaimed thing. But the concept of dyke in modern imagery, outside of the community, has a lot of stereotypes. I wanted to make something that felt like it was subverting that. Not everyone in the book at this moment in time is like, “I’m a gold star lesbian”. Some are bisexual. Some are trans masc men or trans fem women. I wanted to try to invite as many people in and ask, ‘Do you feel you belong to this community?’ And ‘Do you want to be seen in this project?’ I was surprised by how many people who aren’t just cis lesbians wanted to be included. There’s a lot of fluidity in the community.
You shot 50 people over five years. Can you tell me about some of them?
Emily Lipson: One of the really cool ones was with Charlotte Day Wilson for an album cover. She was living in LA, and the shoot was just her and I and two other people. We drove around in a car together, and they are some of my favourite pictures I’ve ever taken. I also did a big two-day shoot in Paris in 2024 that was all streetcast dykes for the book. It was cool to be transplanted into an existing community, and then also become the glue that brings new people together by making this work. In this digital social universe we live in, things can feel disparate. We’re engaging, but we’re not together, so it’s important to create these in-person meetups.
Are you in the book?
Emily Lipson: There was one, but I ended up taking myself out. I like the separation. But while I’m shooting, I do start to match the person. Something happens where I’m channelling them. So, in other words, I do exist in the picture. I don’t need to be there visually, but my energy is being conducted into it. It’s a dance.
How did you decide who made the cut?
Emily Lipson: It was just a feeling when going through the pictures. I have exes in the book, but I can still detach from the personal baggage to see if it feels like a strong image. There were no sacred cows. At the end of the day, it’s a visual object, and I had to arrive at decisions that way. But, looking at it now, there are a million edits I would have made. So I’m going to do more books.
What else do you want to explore?
Emily Lipson: Identity is really the core of everything for me right now. It’s how we are invited into rooms. Your identity is both propelling you into spaces and allowing you to be around the community you need, but it’s also stifling. It gives you something and limits you. I was writing in my notes app and got to this thought about how the way I feel seen is by seeing myself reflected back. Identity at its best is what builds community, and there aren’t enough images of my lovers and friends, and how we exist in the world, so I just want to keep building that so more people feel seen.
You wiped your Instagram clean before the launch. Is this a new era for you?
Emily Lipson: I think I’ve struggled for the entirety of my career to bind myself to a single aesthetic because I’m not a brand, I’m a human who is constantly evolving. My ideas change. Recently, I’ve gotten into painting even though I’m shit at it, so wiped my Instagram because stylistically some of it feels old. I think I want my work to sort of just exist. I want to make a work around themes. In this book, I shot on 12 different cameras. I used AI. There’s some collage. It’s aesthetically all over the place. There are bugs and photos of tampons that are cropped as still lifes. I came to the realisation that no aesthetic is the unifying theme of my work; it has to be the theme instead. Also, omission is cool. I want to do pop-ups where you see work over a week, and then it might be gone. You just have to follow along.
Tell me more about how you used AI.
Emily Lipson: What’s interesting about generative AI is what it’s drawing from and what the existing record of stereotypes or biases is. I took a bunch of photos and circled the heads and said, ‘Make a lesbian hairdo.’ So it’s kind of an Easter egg thing.
And what about the bugs?
Emily Lipson: Bugs are dykes to me. I think it’s obvious as to why. When you look at a book, there’s a left and right side, and those two images are always in conversation. I think the bugs paired with some of the people emphasise the themes of otherness. It’s a community that’s often misunderstood, and I think the bugs help to tell that story.
Dykes by Emily Lipson is available to pre-order here.
