Woman who loves women

Summer was winding down at my grandmother’s house, and my sister and I finished our last bowl of crab apples that the neighbor picked for us from her garden.

With nothing left but tiny cores and tiny seeds, we hatched a plan away from my grandmother to dig a small hole in the far corner of the yard and then dump the remnants of the bowl inside. We told ourselves that a tree would one day sprout and that we would come back in the distant future to pick the fruit. And at that time we would confess to our grandmother, who would still somehow be alive, that it was us who had dug up the hole and emptied the seeds inside. We would then be forgiven. Or so we hoped. We waited for her to go back into the house.

Soon after we fled the scene and found our grandma in the living room, watching one of her soap operas. We sat in our usual strict silence, exchanging occasional, complicit glances. We had gotten away with good mischief and so the day was deemed a success.

Our grandmother moved out of that house a year later and we never returned to the garden.

But I had come to realize later on that even if she had stayed and a tree were to have bloomed, she would have never believed that it was because of us. And how could we prove it without also confessing to having torn up her precious yard? That poor thing.

Over twenty years have passed since our last trouble making day in the garden and I still sometimes wonder if anything ever grew there, not that it would be so difficult to check given how close by her old place is.

But while I outgrew my urge to cause mischief, I never lost my ability to keep a good, innocent secret…even from myself.

***

With “woman who loves women”, Polish artist and photographer Jacek Kloskowski speaks to us about fostering sexual openness that exists outside of the forced confines of acronyms and popular lingo.

“With this project I want to show that women who love women shouldn’t be reduced to a label. Sometimes these are just regular people who are looking for a change from their usual heterosexual relationships, whatever their reasons may be. There are also women who might say ‘Hey let’s do it – I want to experience something new’ or ‘I’ve never kissed a girl –
when is the photoshoot?’ ”, he explains.

“Most of them add, ‘I’ve always wanted to do it!’. Of course, in this series you will not only see couples, but single women who were paired up with other singles for the purposes of the project.”

Jacek chose Oliwia and Linda to introduce the series, and he tells us that it was a truly amazing experience for everyone involved.

“I opted to give them the space to do their own thing without much direction on my part. It turned out to be the right decision because the girls had chemistry and clicked right away. Once they broke out into dance, things took on a life of their own and all I could do past that point was to be there to capture the moment. This special and unexpected energy stayed with us until the end of the shoot, which turned out to be unbelievably sensual and touching”.

Linda: “Even though I would consider myself “straight” there was always a part of me that yearned for a feminine sensitivity and tenderness that I found to be lacking in my relationships with men”.

Oliwia: “The project was a challenge for me but I really wanted to show how caring , authentic, and full of friendship the love of two women can be”.