who is afraid of difference?
This project is a part of my on-going project about misogyny and phallic worship.
Frist, those series came from what is different between homosexual and heterosexual. As a person who has grown up in Confucian territory, I have understood it can be abnormal because this marital relationship cannot give a birth. The propagation of the family and respect for parents and ancestors are huge value in Asian culture. Moreover propagation of lineage, that is attendant upon surname is the most important, so there is a notion of preferring a son to a daughter, strongly. It became illegal recently, selected abortion was common in order to pick only sons up in Korea.
Thus, this background has developed lower women’s right. From this culture, women became to ignore than men and different women can suffer more ignorance. Women get imposed to be good wives, great mothers and perfect daughters-in-law, rather than workers even they have jobs. Lesbians can undergo stubborn ignorance in surrounding because they cannot conduct those roles that the society wants.
Furthermore, I noticed a very interesting phenomenon. This is there is misogyny even in LGBTQ culture. People normally accept Homosexuality and they don't doubt they were born that way, even some feel hatred them up. However, they are lukewarm to Lesbians culture as much as they are to homosexual couple. They think lesbians can change their sexualities. Besides, many males have joked that lesbians can be heterosexuals if they can have a great sex with 'real strong men' when I told them about my lesbian friends to my Korean cisgender friends. Also they asked me to introduce them to change their sexuality. For me, those jokes are terribly ridiculous. With that reason, I started to take a look my friends and tried to take a photographs they were together. It looks very comfortable and they have been building up their own palace peacefully, growing up together. This is touched to me.
Working on this project, I have agonised why the male think and say that ridiculous and I found a hypothesis; they cannot accept that two uteruses are not going to give birth in male dominance culture or they always think women are sexual objects.
Those photographs started in that point. I took my lesbian friends, capturing their intimate and jolly moment. There was demand to take their sensual and sexual scenes from some professionals but I decided to capture their comfort moment because I would like to show how they are cozy and familiar when they are together. In general, there is a prejudice that lesbians are more cynical and aggressive than cisgender female but it is not ture. That is another prejudice. My models are nothing different, they look normal — I don’t know who make a rule what is normal or not though. Plus, if we should say different, everyone are different in personalities anyway. So I hided their face and focused on the situation and gestures.
In relationship, more important thing is to understand each other and to be natural together. This is the same in any type of relationship. Gender, races and nationalities are nothing between two loving people.


























©Lena K. Lee, 2017
