id you know your gynaecologist was a dyke? Or your doctor, or your lawyer, or the chef in your favourite restaurant? Does it matter? Of course not. So why, then, a photographic exhibition which promotes lesbian visibility in the workplace? Because, despite official legislation to the opposite, the reality is that homophobia continues to make such a project essential, crucial even. In this light, artist/photographer Jean Brundrit's Dyke Career Series, with its inoffensive showcase of larger-than-life black and white portraits, does matter. And will continue to be necessary, until attitudes change.

Anyone who does seek to dismiss the artist's photographs on the grounds that the impetus fueling lesbian activism has been nullified by our newly permissive constitution should take a look at the politics, the process and context of these works. Especially since not all of the women Brundit invited to participate agreed to pose for the series and the accompanying Dyke Career Calendar for the Year 2000.

"One area where lesbians are particularly invisible is in the job market because of the fear of discrimination … I think that kind of concern is still definitely there," the artist explains. "And certainly with the people who didn't want to be part of the calendar. There were two actresses who talked about type-casting - which is a bit, for me, ironic because do people think acting is real? And then there were high school teachers and people working in the medical profession."

For this reason, most of the women represented in the Dyke Career Series, which lined the walls of the AVA Gallery in Cape Town in September, and are currently in the Rembrandt Gallery at the Market in Jo'burg, are either self-employed or work in particularly liberal insitutions like UCT or the Triangle Health Project.

Because of their scale it is virtually impossible to ignore the larger-than-poster-size prints. Relaxed, self-confident chefs, musicians, community workers, travel agents and a host of other working women, depicted with the trappings of their chosen careers, gaze unassumingly from the frames. Formally, Brundit has taken standard, almost traditional portraits of her subjects. Despite their engaging scale, this compositional unadventurousness lends the photographs a certain blandness, or flatness.

"In terms of my subject matter, I wanted the most homophobic person to find little to object to ..." says Brundrit. The results are indeed unobjectionable photographs. Despite the artist's intentions, however, it is disappointing that the witty reversals evident in the invitation and calendar cover (showing Brundrit in a cocktail dress juxtaposed with an image of her in a tuxedo) were not carried through to the works themselves.

Shown in conjunction with the outsized prints is the earlier series Does Your Lifestyle Depress Your Mother (1997-98). Printed smaller than a snapshot, these intimately sized black-and white prints allow privileged, voyeuristic glimpses into the personal lives of couples. Viewers must approach the works closely in order to discern a pair of lovers sleeping peacefully in a bed, or two women hunkering competitively over a pool table. The photographs lay open the personal in the public sphere, and are demystifying, tender depictions of lesbian identity.

Does your Lifestyle Depress Your Mother, which looks at everything but the world of work, sets up a fruitful dialogue with the later Dyke Career Series (1998-1999) which centres around visibility in the economic terrain. Both are grouped under Brundrit's ironically playful but pointed heading, The Lavender Menace.

It's a term that was first coined in May 1970 during the nascent gay liberation and feminist movements in America when a group of 40 lesbians called themselves The Lavender Menace and demanded that lesbian issues be taken seriously at the Second Congress to Unite Women. Brundrit's project deserves no less.

The Lavender Menace is on exhibition at the Rembrandt Gallery, Market Theatre, Newtown until November 20. Gallery hours: Monday to Saturday, 9.30am to 10.30pm. Tel: (011) 832-1641; e-mail: gallery@market.theatre.co.za

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