Alex Berg

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What does ‘Sapphic’ mean? An ancient term is having a modern moment

When people look at images captured by Ty Busey, the photographer says she wants them to know that the pictures and films were captured by a queer woman. Drawing on Renaissance paintings as inspiration, Busey poses her subjects, who are LGBTQ women and nonbinary people, with halos and textured backgrounds in lounging postures. She describes her artistic eye in one word: “Sapphic.” The term derives from Sappho, a lyrical poet who lived in ancient Greece and created verses about pursuing women lovers that were rich in sensuality and nostalgia — and even libertine at times.  The style of Busey’s work […]

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Forty years after first documented AIDS cases, survivors reckon with ‘dichotomy of feelings’

For Eric Sawyer, the 40th anniversary of the first scientific report that described AIDS as a new disease brings up “a dichotomy of feelings.” When Sawyer, who was living in New York, first began exhibiting symptoms of HIV in 1981, he said he was urged by his friend, the late activist and playwright Larry Kramer, to begin seeing “a doctor who’s also gay, who is seeing patients with this disease.” That same year, across the country, a young physician named Michael Gottlieb and his colleagues at UCLA wrote in an official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report about patients diagnosed with a […]

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A Transgender Powerlifter Fights for the Right to Compete

The first time JayCee Cooper walked out onto the platform at a women’s powerlifting competition, everything else fell away: her years-long internal struggle over her gender identity, her decision to leave men’s sports when she began transitioning, her doubts that she would ever feel safe if she returned to competitions. When she stepped out in front of a hundred people in the gym in Fort Collins, Colorado, last September, all she focused on was the barbell, which she hoisted off the ground. And then she heard the cheers of the crowd: “Come on JayCee!” She had found not only a […]