Katie Mayfield: "I'm doing a series of timeline-portraits of lesbian women's lives. I will do at least five portraits of each woman from childhood to old age, tracing their chronologies through pictures and text. The opening goal of this project is representation. There are almost no positive examples of butch and gender-nonconforming gay women in any media, and young lesbians are left to wonder what it means to live a life that no one acknowledges or includes. People are always hungry for stories that reflect themselves; this is my attempt. What I want to create with this piece is a sense of hope, or a promise. To be an unfeminine, gay woman is difficult, frustrating, and often isolating, but we survive. Tragedy is not the inevitable conclusion to our lives, and it never was. We have every chance to be happy."
