My friend and artistic mentor Tee Corinne is dying of cancer.
As you may know about cancer— both the good and bad part of it— is that it can take a little while, and get rather expensive, even if all you desire is palliative care. The good news is that you get more time to plan the way you want to go.
For some of you, Tee Corinne is synonymous with lesbian art, women's genital consciousness (The Cunt Coloring Book), and the lesbian feminist philosophy of the female gaze, the loving eye of women's artistic collaboration. She is the beginning of lesbian erotic photography, and her influence is inestimable.
Susie: Do you think lesbians have a different relationship to what their genitals look like, than a heterosexual woman would have?
Tee: I think they have a different impetus to learn.
This weekend, we're having a benefit event to raise money for her care, in San Francisco. See details below... I will be your charming hostess. Laurie Toby Edison, Honey Lee Cottrell, Dossie Easton, Jill Posener, and many others will be there. You can buy some of Tee's work— that is, you may be able to if I don't grab it all and run out the back door like a lunatic. We'll videotape the event so Tee can watch it afterward, in her home in Southern Oregon.
When I edited my lesbian photography book Nothing But the Girl with Jill Posener, our point of portfolio origins was Tee. I'd like to share of my essay about her with you here, so you can learn more about her, or remember why it's going to be so tough when she's gone:
In the beginning, there was Tee; and also in the middle, there she was again; and at the very end, triumphantly, I expect to see Tee. She has created the most lasting images of lesbian eroticism, the vulva landscapes, the crayon-colored cunts, the solarized lesbian embraces, the portrait of her scowling lover in a starched white shirt.
She was the beginning because there was no one before her who articulated their art, their erotic art for lesbians, with a lesbian sensibility. She persevered in spite of the inhibitions and prejudices on the part of the publishers she courted.
She was so successful that every new generation of lesbian photographers who follow her look back on her work as some sort of norm, the basic lesbian photograph. But without her tenaciousness, that there would have been no basic anything...
Tee Party! A Cancer Benefit for Tee Corinne
Sat, May 20
7:00 pm
$10-100 sliding scale
Center for Sex & Culture
398 11th at Harrison
San Francisco
Pioneering lesbian erotic photographer Tee Corinne, whose work in the 
1970s broke ground for the lesbian erotic revolution, is dying of cancer. The
Center for Sex & Culture is producing a benefit for her.
It includes an exhibition of Tee's photographs. Buy your own piece of Tee's art!
Also featuring:
An altar table w/ Cunt Coloring Book pictures for people to color.
A slideshow of Tee's work from the 70's to now.
A reading from Dossie Easton.
Testimonial time re: Tee and her influence. Come speak out about Tee and her work! This will be videotaped by Carol Leigh; the resulting document will live here at CSC and copies will be sent to Tee, the LGBT Historical Society, the Kinsey Institute, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
At the Epicenter Gallery at the Center for Sex & Culture
Door at 7, show at 8.
Venue:
Center for Sex & Culture
398 11th at Harrison
San Francisco
415-255-1155
Additional Info: 415-255-1155
Photographs, from top to bottom: cunt photograph from the Isis series, the famous solarized photo used in the Sinister Wisdom journal and poster, portrait of Honey Lee Cottrell that graced the Swashbuckler cover, Tee with her painting of Romaine Brooks, and one of her lesbian sex photos from Yantras of WomanLove. You can see more of Tee's work by Googling her, and also in the pages of Nothing But the Girl:The Blatant Lesbian Image.
Recent Comments