Trust Me

Though best known for her avant-garde, lesbian, feminist filmmaking projects of the 1970s and 1980s, Barbara Hammer also created a series of black-and-white photographs at the beginning of her career of herself as well as her friends, lovers, and collaborators. Through tender depictions of bodies at rest, at play, or engaged in sex, the artist affirms the worthiness of the everyday as a subject for art, while offering these intimate moments as testament to a life lived joyfully in queer community. The photographs—many of which were made on a trip to Hornby Island in British Columbia, Canada—also give shape and dimension to the artist’s social circle at the time; some individuals appear more than once, and Hammer frequently names them in the works’ titles. In Barbara & Terry, Hammer lies in tall grass, entangled with her then partner Terry.