Charlotte Makes Photos

Just after lunch last Saturday, Kathleen and I made our way to the city’s Human Rights Monument to join the 22^nd annual Dyke March. Along with the Trans March, the Dyke March rejects the corporatization of queer life, discrimination of dykes, and all forms of oppression.

When I first came out, “main” Pride parade felt very important event to attend, but it didn’t take long for it to feel like an artifact of sort of bygone era of queer existence, if it even really ever was. I am far from a lemon-sucker, but it feels like a celebration by and for gay men and some lesbians for whom it seems to be mission accomplished once Canada legalized/formalized gay marriage in 2005.

The very shiny sponsor-heavy celebration of a cisgender gay experience expressed mostly through rainbows and drag queens doesn’t speak the same language as I do and rather feels like I’m being handed a fiddle as the flames grow. Play on, Charlotte, we’ll add a trans flag to our float and make long faces as we watch them eat you.

Most egregiously, corporate sponsors and larger institutions determining the sorts of advocacy and content that are unacceptable, like Israel’s apartheid and subsequent genocide of Palestinians, like advocating for queer refugees who aren’t being treated well in Canada and living in poverty, like advocating for safe supply and harm reduction programs, like solving the housing crisis, like reversing the disappearance of kink and more frank displays of queer life under the guise of it being a “family event”.

Combined, it flattens queer existence into a once-annual drag queen bedazzled celebration of something, or if the 🏳️‍🌈 LOVE IS LOVE 🏳️‍🌈 signs mean anything, the result of a long legal battle to recognize same-sex marriage, as if that was the only problem we queers face. I’m glad that many people really enjoy themselves while there, but it ends up being as inconsequential and unchallenging as Valentine’s Day and as on-message as Victoria Day.

Speaking as one transsexual lesbian, though I am now materially comfortable, that does not really reflect my experience of queerness and certainly fails to identify the very dark clouds surrounding transsexuals, refugees, Indigenous people, low-income people, sex workers, people with addictions, and more. What’s even more galling is that queers are disproportionately represented among all of those people and yet we’re still mostly treated to displays of upper-middle income Adam and Steve Triumphant.

This is why the Trans and Dyke marches are the most important aspects of Pride Season to me. They’re community-led events that refuse to throw anybody under the bus and seek justice for all. Not some. All. No corporate and institutional sponsors to call the shots or look on disapprovingly and issue shaded threats to their funding. They’re ours and they only demand we march beneath one of many personal identity flags or support those who do.

And what’s wonderful about it is that they’re also celebrations, showing that you can absolutely call to end oppression and celebrate who you are in a world determined to make sure you don’t.

Photo Lessons!

As for the photos?

There’s always a lesson, isn’t there?

Some users of the CineStill Cs41 kit have indicated that a little additional time has to be added for each roll used, but in doing so, I found that this roll of Ektar was a little overdeveloped and the roll of Lomo Purple (tomorrow’s post) was very overdeveloped.

I thought it seemed off, since the Flic Film kit I normally use is always 3m40s for the entire 16-roll strength. My next colour rolls with this kit will be done at the 3m30s the pamphlet indicates.

Although this kit is not anywhere near as problematic as the Flic simplified “eco” kit was, I don’t think I have space in my mind palace for more if/then statements and path dependencies when I’m developing film, so I will just return to using what I’m most familiar with.