30/05/2022
this is a portrait i took of my friend and feminist icon hite in 1994 who started a culture revolution and gave the right to pleasure to women for the german magazine
a year after shere hites death our common friend told me that shere had written about our work in “the Hite report on Shere Hite “
Re-symbolizing the Female Body
Reintegrating Sexual and Spiritual Identity ·
“In 1994, early autumn, the photographer Iris Brosch was asked to do a photographic portrait of me for the colour magazine of the prestigious German paper, Frankfurter Allgemeinge. Brosch and I had already worked together on a photo shoot for the Pompidou Centre in Paris. FAZ magazine is well known for its feature called ‘Portrait’; in which the person interviewed is asked to present the essence of him or herself and their work, in words and photographs. Brosch took photos of me in a beautiful Parisian fountain in summer, enjoying myself in the water. I also had a small notepad with me and I was writing at the same time! (As Iris said, ‘Why always show a writer at a desk? When most of the work comes from the soul and mind?’ Good point.)”
“This photo, however – publishing it in context with my political and theoretical writings – put me in an inner turmoil. I was unsure whether people would understand the re-unification of the sexual and intellectual (body and mind) we were trying to portray. As women, we were both dealing in our lives with issues of sexuality, and society’s view (descended from ‘religious teaching’) of our supposed ‘good, correct behaviour.”