New York: Lesbians Seeing Lesbians

Press release from The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

Lesbians Seeing Lesbians

Building Community in Early Feminist Photography

Exhibition Ends October 22, 2011 at the Leslie-Lohman Gallery, 26 Wooster Street, NYC, USA

Tee Corrine, Self-portrait, Gelatin silver print, 1980. Press photo courtesy of Leslie-Lohman Gallery.

In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, the 1970s brought a feminist revolution with lesbians, not always acceptably, to the forefront. In pursuit of personal and political liberation, lesbians photographed each other within an emerging lesbian feminist community, asserting their right to self-representation within a context of straight men, gay men and straight women. They gave widespread visibility to a new social ideal, born of that defining lesbian feminist notion asking, “Since women are no longer defined as accessories to men, what can, and should, a feminist society be?”

Lesbians Seeing Lesbians: building community in early feminist photography focuses on three of the most prominent photographers of this early generation: Tee A. Corrine (1943-2006: St. Petersburg, Florida), JEB (Joan E. Biren, b.1944: Washington D.C.), and Cathy Cade (b.1942: Honolulu, Hawaii). In addition, this exhibition pays tribute to these pioneering women by showing work of contemporary lesbian photographers including Catherine Opie and Cass Bird that engages and reworks their founding vision in contemporary lesbian life. This exhibition also includes key documents of the lesbian feminist and lesbian separatist movements.

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Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
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