Strange Fire

Book Review: “SAY SO” by Whitney Hubbs

By Keavy Handley-Byrne   |  February 17, 2022

Published by SPBH Editions in November 2021
Hardcover / 11.5 x 9.5 inches / 64 pages

When I first approached Whitney Hubbs’ most recent publication, Say So, it was the black vinyl and gold, reflective old-English lettering style that drew me in. As soon as I picked it up, my fingerprints appeared on its shiny surface, oily and smudged. The perfect, smooth surface was marred just by my touch, immediately dirtied from handling, and every trace of touchers before me remains, too. Picking up the display copy in a bookstore, a fresh, shrink-wrapped copy lies beneath, the vinyl cover almost audible in its friction against the tight plastic.

It’s a fitting opening to Say So, comprising fifteen self-portraits by Hubbs. From image to image, Hubbs appears in various degrees of restraint – bound with duct tape, gagged with an apple; covered in chewing gum, or sometimes urine. Fabric becomes an important part of the story: black or pink lace, red satin, and black pleather playing the accessible counterpart to the more hardcore fetish paraphernalia, including a gas mask, an open-mouth gag, and prosthetic breasts.

It would be easy for some to label these images as pornographic or degrading, and become enmeshed in tired, negative stereotypes about BDSM as a practice. Say So’s landscape seems intentionally unstable, each image throwing the viewer’s expectations off balance. In nearly all of the included photographs, Hubbs is making direct eye contact with the camera, daring the viewer to call her position subjugated. 

Instead, as Chris Kraus writes in her accompanying text, “... the black shutter release in each of these frames reminds us that Hubbs is both subject and object, seer and seen.” Her gaze meets ours and challenges it. While the visual language Hubbs uses could lead us to look at Helmut Newton or Les Krims, the important distinction being the control she wields before the camera. The black rubber of the shutter release bulb fits into the images as its own fetish object, forcing the viewer to contend with the discomfort of knowing this subjugation comes from the photographer/subject’s desire. 

It is this desire that forms the axis around which the photographs spin. Each image implies an intense setup followed by an endurance performance. In some images, Hubbs’ expression implies exhaustion, while in others, she seems energized. The images shift between erotic and disquieting. 

It’s an image near the back of the book that raises my hackles. Hubbs, in a bubblegum-pink lacy pair of panties, is covered from just below her collarbone to the bottom of her ribcage with gobs of wet-looking chewing gum. Her mouth is held open by a quasi-medical device, stretching her lips back in a kind of snarl, revealing all of her teeth. Immediately, the gum brings to mind the horrifying analogy used in sex-ed classes around the United States: that a girl becomes “chewed up” by having sex, and therefore undesirable. The snarl, too, recalls instances of being told to “smile” when perceived as feminine – again a command to perform, in order to appeal to any man you might encounter.

Say So ruminates on these gendered performances, asking us to reckon with how much territory desire and disgust share. Both can be uncomfortable, vulnerable positions, but can also come with a great deal of personal power. 

Say So is available from SPBH Editions.