Self Portrait with Friend

Poet Dani Yourukova responds to Daisy Tinney's photography in Te Papa collections.

A sepia photograph of two gender non-conforming people lying side by side in bed wearing night gowns and lace mob caps with the covers pulled up to their stomachs, pillows piled high behind them. Daisy Tinney, on the left, stares directly at the viewer, right hand resting on the covers, a ring prominent on her index finger. On the right, Daisy's friend looks ahead, nightgown slipping off one shoulder. She holds a book open in one hand and a half eaten treat in the other. Wrapping paper is strewn over the comforter.

Daisy Tinney, In bed - self-portrait with friend, 1910s-20s, Wellington. Purchased 2023. Te Papa (PS.004025)

Self Portrait with Friend

after Daisy Tinney

Women abound in sepia spill,

candid, barely bedroom-eyed,

but languid, in this album of

sapphic silver-gelatin repose,

‘self-portrait with friend’ reads

the tag-line, under the

sheets where we find the old

cliches for woman-lovers.

Of course, the artist’s work is

missing, archives dry of details

and prize-winning

muscular shore studies,

but look, how rich we are in

space (that old supposition).

Pale legs in strap shoes, torn

from an image which is lost.

Dani Yourukova is ‘a queer Wellington writer with great hair and a bad personality’ who completed their MA at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Their work has been published in takahē, Stasis, The Spinoff, Turbine | Kapohau and the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.