Searching for Danielle

Of course I've been quite excited that I won an international portfolio competition (along with two other photographers) and that twenty pieces of my work are being shown next month at the Soho Photo Gallery. I was further delighted when I was told that the signature image for the gallery show's promotional postcard would be my portrait of a woman named Danielle Santos Bernal who wrote in the notebook, "This man's a lady."

Naturally, I wanted to let each of the twenty portrait subjects know that their image would be shown, and so I set to emailing them. Unfortunately, the email I had for Danielle bounced back, and I had no other immediate way to connect with her. So I did what most people would do in order to find her: I Googled.

The Google listings were thin. And then I came upon this "director's statement" for a movie called The Last Fast Ride. The statement begins with this:


"I first met Marian Anderson in the early ‘90’s at a party at our friend Nathan’s house in the San Fernando Valley.  I was warned to stay away from her or I might get beat up by her crazy girlfriend, Danielle Santos Bernal".  (You can read about the film here)

With a little further digging on the 'net I found a mailing address for Danielle in California. I wrote to her, told her about the exhibit and sent her the promotional card with her photo. So I had to hope she'd remember our photographic encounter last June, and pleased that she'd been featured in the promo. After all, I certainly didn't want her to get upset, come back to NY and beat me up.

Turns out I fretted for nothing. Turns out Danielle was thrilled with her picture and contacted me to tell me so. She also wrote this poignant observation:

"I can't believe people are interested in my mug! All my life I've been looked as one thing but I'm the opposite of what is perceived, so thank you! Butch women  have always been taboo even now in the media,on the streets... So this means a lot 2 me! I'm not trans. I'm just butch as fuck an very proud of it! My only hope one day we as butch women will be more accepted and not have 2 femme up 2 get that job or think we need 2 be men 2 be complete! Or actually in main stream films have a butch get that part in a film and not some femme woman tryin 2 pull it off! This means more than you know! Yer pal D.S.B."