Angelic Rebels

I met Tessa Boffin (1960–1993) in the late 1980s at a party near where she lived in southeast London. We were in a relationship for a couple of years and during that time she asked me to model for a project she was working on, Angelic Rebels: Lesbians and Safer Sex 1989.

I wasn’t sure at first, as I’m quite shy, but she encouraged me by saying that one of her friends, Helen Dancey, would also be involved. A few days before the shoot, we went to a park and messed around with clothes and props – including a large fluffy snake – to get comfortable with each other. This broke the ice and we had a lot of fun.

Together, the five photographs in the series tell a story. An angel – inspired by the winged figure in Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I 1514 – sits gloomily in the atmosphere created by the press coverage of HIV and AIDS at the time. As she learns about safe sex, the melancholy tone gives way to ecstasy and hope. It ends with an embrace between this figure, played by Helen, and me: a ‘safer sex angel’.

The sequence of images was constructed meticulously. Tessa thought deeply about her work, which engaged with taboos, lesbian passion and visibility. She hoped to cut through the prejudice and stereotypes surrounding HIV and AIDS, and to explore how issues around sex affected lesbians as well, since we were left out of the public conversation.

The safer sex angel enters in the third picture, cocooned in cling film, as the other angel begins to engage with literature informing her about safe sex and related paraphernalia. The crocodile at our feet represents the insincerity of the crocodile tears shed by many at the time.

I emerge from my cocoon in the fourth photograph, wearing sunglasses and a skirt made of dental dams. My wings are made from chicken wire and pieces of a vegetable steamer. Perhaps they represent something less idealised or more rebellious than the other angel’s feathered wings, but the way the light catches them is beautiful, echoing the reflections on the metal parts of my harness. In the background of the scene is a superimposed photograph of the winged statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, a symbol of love.

In the last picture, Helen appears to be floating away in ecstasy as I hold on to her leather harness. We were in darkness in the black box studio, so had to experiment. There’s a vibrancy to that final pose – it’s quite sexy. The backdrop image this time is a detail from The Wilton Diptych c.1395–9, which I remember going to see with Tessa at the National Gallery.

The safer sex angel enters in the third picture, cocooned in cling film, as the other angel begins to engage with literature informing her about safe sex and related paraphernalia. The crocodile at our feet represents the insincerity of the crocodile tears shed by many at the time.

I emerge from my cocoon in the fourth photograph, wearing sunglasses and a skirt made of dental dams. My wings are made from chicken wire and pieces of a vegetable steamer. Perhaps they represent something less idealised or more rebellious than the other angel’s feathered wings, but the way the light catches them is beautiful, echoing the reflections on the metal parts of my harness. In the background of the scene is a superimposed photograph of the winged statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, a symbol of love.

In the last picture, Helen appears to be floating away in ecstasy as I hold on to her leather harness. We were in darkness in the black box studio, so had to experiment. There’s a vibrancy to that final pose – it’s quite sexy. The backdrop image this time is a detail from The Wilton Diptych c.1395–9, which I remember going to see with Tessa at the National Gallery.

I didn’t know these photographs were in Tate’s collection until I came across them by chance in the Women in Revolt! exhibition at Tate Britain a couple of years ago. It was a shock. I was walking around chatting to a friend, and I said, ‘That’s me!’ Then some young women came over and I had a little fan club for five seconds. One of them invited me to go on a march, where she introduced me to some other young people, who said they had just attended a lecture on Tessa’s work.

So, Angelic Rebels represents a chapter of my past that has come back to hit me in the present. I think people are more ready to engage with Tessa’s work in the current social and cultural climate, and I’m reminded of the courage she showed in exploring her passions and vulnerability through her work. There is an activeness to it – it reverberates, it creates these ripples. I think Tessa would have loved that, and I feel sad she isn’t here to feel the full impact her work continues to have.

^{Angelic Rebels was purchased with funds provided by the 2023 Frieze Tate Fund supported by Endeavor to benefit the Tate collection and accessioned in 2024. It is included in the free display End of a Century: 1990–2000. Tessa Boffin: Where We Touch the Archive opened at Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne this summer and travels to Backlit Gallery in Nottingham, Photoworks Festival in Brighton and Aspex Portsmouth. A monograph edited by Sunil Gupta was published by Stanley/Barker last year and Tessa Boffin’s work is the focus of a new book by Flora Dunster published by Yale University Press.}

^{Jane Harmer lives in southeast London.}