“Westside Butch explores the connection between the traditional masculinities of my youth and the queer Butch masculinities of my present. Throughout the photo series, I deploy the iconography of low-income, white masculinities — those masculinities of my hometown — through the staging of guns, woodworking materials, ladders, yard tools and more. I complicate these symbols by photographing them alongside lesbian (rather than male) figures. I’m interested in how the iconography of hegemonic masculinity becomes subversive when placed in relation to the lesbian form, and how this subversion works to create a new, uniquely queer form of masculinity. Westside Butch requires me to step into the masculinities of my youth— to, at once, celebrate my queerness, and honor the men who raised me.”