The Photographer Who Captured 20th-Century Queer Life
Joan E. Biren’s images from the ’70s and ’80s—which appear in the new exhibit “Art After Stonewall”<em>—</em>reflect an effort to document and encourage lesbian love.
Updated: 2019-06-19
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series about the gay-rights movement and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
In her classic 1975 self-portrait, the lesbian photographer Joan E. Biren (or “JEB,” as she is more commonly known) tacitly shifts the meaning of a road sign. Smiling, with a glint in her eye, she leans comfortably against the post, her confident posture signaling a reconfiguration of the word emblazoned above her head: points not to the Virginia town the sign is announcing, but to the photographer herself. (1975) is a reclamation of the slur and a confrontation with all but JEB’s most kindred
