Hello, dear friends:

This is for all of you, devoted to the history of photography, erotic representation, and lesbian history.

We finally did it. It only took ~40 years. The history of the lesbian gaze in art photography is finally coming to light.

Radical Desire: The Making of On Our Backs Magazine

An Exhibition from The Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell

Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, & Michael T. Sillerman '68 Rotunda are open:

Monday to Friday, 9am - 5pm

The Johnson Museum is open:

Tuesday - Sunday, 10am - 5pm

LINK

L.A. Hyder, first cover of On Our Backs, 1984

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I will be in Ithaca, New York— along with many colleagues from On Our Backs — to give a series of tours and programs on the history of On Our Backs’ photography— and the artists who changed the world.

Below are 10 events — yes, ten!— I’d like to invite you to share with me. I’ll be part of it all, from late April to early June.

This is, to put it mildly, a unique moment to talk with living legends, who are not going to be around in another forty years. You’ll see the glorious youth in the photos below— but these artists are in their sixties and seventies now. We are very conscious of those who are already gone.

Book your visit, in other words. This is special.

Berenice Abbott, Princess Eugéne Marat, 1930

TUESDAY APRIL 26

BERENICE ABBOTT: PORTRAITS OF WOMEN, 1925–1930

Abbott’s Influence on the Work of Tee Corinne & Honey Lee Cottrell - Two Generations of Lesbian Photography

The Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

4 - 5 pm

A Talk by Susie Bright, hosted by Kate Addleman-Frankel. Corinne and Cottrell are no longer with us, and Susie recalls their endless tutorials and arguments on how Abbott influenced and enraged their work.

WEDNESDAY APRIL 27

The Feminist Sex Wars: A Retrospective

Gayle Rubin, visiting lecturer

2B48 Kroch Library, Olin Library, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA

4 - 6 pm

In a lecture celebrating the Library's exhibition Radical Desire: Making On Our Backs Magazine, writer Gayle Rubin will explore the relevant history of San Francisco's queer leather culture. After the lecture and discussion, there will be an opportunity to explore the exhibition.

In person, come early for a seat. It is a classroom setting.

Online, register here.

Honey Lee Cottrell, On Our Backs staff, 5th Anniversary Staff portrait, 1989

THURSDAY APRIL 28

Making a Lesbian Sex Magazine in the Age of Feminist Sex Wars

Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, 232 East Ave, Central Campus

4 - 6 pm

Panel featuring OOB original publishers, editors, and artists: Lulu Belliveau, Susie Bright, Phyllis Christopher, Morgan Gwenwald, Nan Kinney, Jill Posener, Deborah Sundahl, Jessica Tanzer, Karen Williams; and moderator Gayle Rubin.

In-person, come early for a seat, no reservations.

Online, register here.

FRIDAY MAY 13

Butch Femme Erotica in Turn of the 21st Century Lesbian Erotica

Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, 4 - 6 pm

12 person limit. Exhibition tour with Susie Bright on a special topic. By Reservation Only: book through office@susiebright.com, one week in advance.

FRIDAY MAY 20

Honey Lee Cottrell and the Psycho Sexual Lesbian Urban Subway Map

Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, 4 - 6 pm

12 person limit. Exhibition tour with Susie Bright on a special topic. By Reservation Only: book through office@susiebright.com, one week in advance.

Selection of OOB covers, Radical Desire Exhibit

FRIDAY MAY 27

Lesbian Cover Girls: the Making of the On Our Backs Cover Model

Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, 4 - 6 pm

12 person limit. Exhibition tour with Susie Bright on a special topic. By Reservation Only: book through office@susiebright.com, one week in advance.

Entryway, Hirshland Gallery, Radical Desire Exhibit

FRIDAY JUNE 3

The Models of On Our Backs: The Pioneers of Lesbian Visibility

Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, 4 - 6 pm

12 person limit. Exhibition tour with Susie Bright on a special topic. By Reservation Only: book through office@susiebright.com, one week in advance.

THURSDAY JUNE 9 - REUNION WEEK

Some 1980s Magic: The Launch of On Our Backs & Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection

Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, GS Hall

4:30 - 5:30 pm

On Our Backs editor Susie Bright, RMC Director emerita Elaine Engst, Professor Itsie Hull, and Professor Ritch Savin-Williams will talk about historical factors that led to women in San Francisco launching the first lesbian sex magazine in 1984, while at Cornell, trustees were considering faculty’s recommendations to start a groundbreaking rare books and manuscript collection focused on queer lives, the politics of pornography, and sexuality studies.

FRIDAY, JUNE 10 - REUNION WEEK

(2) Tours of the “Radical Desire: The Making of On Our Backs” Exhibit

Hirshland Gallery, 1 - 1:30 pm, and 2 - 2:30 pm

TOUR 1 = 1:00 – 1:30

TOUR 2 = 2:00 – 2:30

Featuring OOB artists, editor Susie Bright, and Library Curators.

HL Cottrell, Foxy Frances and the Vixens with Sarah Davis and Sally Binford

SATURDAY JUNE 11

Historic Representations of Lesbian Sexuality

RMC Lecture Room, 1-2 and 2-3

Curators Laurent Ferri and Brenda Marston team up with editor Susie Bright, pioneering editor of On Our Backs magazine and instructor of one of the first college courses on porn studies, to show examples of the trends and tropes of lesbian erotica before 20th century lesbian feminists entered the genre as creators.

Look back on the representation of women’s desire for other women, including crude ridicule of Marie Antoinette having sex with other women, which was a small part of her public character assassination, gender ambiguity in Persian love poetry, Sappho, and various fantasies about lesbians through the centuries.

FROM CORNELL CHRONICLE:

From its launch in 1984 to its last issue in 2006, the women-run erotic magazine On Our Backs made good on its tagline of delivering “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian,” ultimately growing a strong international audience and shaping political discourse on sex and sexuality.

Now, a library exhibition highlights the magazine’s pivotal first decade and invites Cornell scholars and the general public to discover its trailblazing beginnings.

Running through Sept. 30 in the Hirshland Exhibition Gallery of Carl A. Kroch Library, “Radical Desire: Making On Our Backs Magazine” features photographs and other archival materials from the publication’s founders and photographers, which are all part of the expansive Cornell Human Sexuality Collection.

Through vivid images, anecdotes, and contextual information, the exhibit traces On Our Backs’ pioneering history as the first publication of its kind to be run by women and explores how the magazine was produced and received – from the challenges of finding advertisers and securing loans, to the joys of nurturing a close-knit community and building a loyal readership.

“On Our Backs was a whole new kind of feminist publication. Emerging at a time when men’s exploitation of women in the sex industry was a focus of the feminist movement, these women decided to create their own non-exploitive sex industry,” said Brenda Marston, curator of the Cornell Human Sexuality Collection, who organized the exhibition with Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson Museum.

“Their bold work to portray authentic lesbian sexuality showed what sex-positive feminism could look like,” Marston added. “In an era when Senator Jesse Helms and President Reagan were blocking effective federal responses to the AIDS crisis and stigmatizing ‘homosexuals,’ On Our Backs meant the world to the queer community.”

Jessica Tanzer’s Gallery of her Historic work in San Francisco

As a companion to Radical Desire, the exhibition Jessica Tanzer’s San Francisco, 1987–1996 has opened at Kroch Library’s Sillerman ’68 Rotunda.

Curated by Marston, this exhibition focuses on the works of one of the photographers for On Our Backs, who was active in the queer club scene and in activist groups Queer Nation, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), and the Bad Cop, No Donut movement that organized peaceful, direct-action protests against violence perpetrated on members of the LGBTQ community.

“Tanzer’s archive and the archive of Honey Lee Cottrell, On Our Backs’ first staff photographer, were what sparked the idea for this project two years ago,” said Addleman-Frankel. “The further we went into these materials, the clearer it became that it was time for an exhibition that would bring the work of these photographers to the attention of the Cornell community and beyond.”

“Few On Our Backs photographers gained acceptance by the art world, yet what they did was remarkable.
“Creating images that they needed to see— that made queer desire visible.
“They were deeply thoughtful about how photography in the hands of men had failed women in the past, and how they might create a new photographic lexicon.”

Addleman-Frankel is also hosting a related exhibit at the Johnson Museum, Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Women, 1925–1930, running until July 31, which features a famed American photographer who influenced the photographers of On Our Backs.

Online versions of Radical Desire and Jessica Tanzer's San Francisco will be published on the library’s exhibits page.

Jill Posener, *OOB* cover, 1987. Models JoAnn Castillo & Doreen Querido

On Our Backs magazine launched in San Francisco in 1984 promising, per the tagline on the cover, “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian.” The photographic images on the cover and throughout were central to its mandate to deliver sexual content for lesbians. The photography also created the greatest difficulties for the magazine’s circulation at a moment when many feminist leaders decried pornographic photographs and film as a form of violence against women.

This exhibition presents original photographs created for On Our Backs during its first decade. Made by staffers and freelancers, professionals and amateurs, members of the magazine’s inner circle and its far-flung readership, they convey the fantasies, imagination, humor, rigor, radicalism, political engagement, and ethos of community-building and inclusion that defined On Our Backs and made it a touchstone in the queer press.

Additional photographs and documents elucidate the political and erotic contexts into which the magazine emerged, the women behind it, and their business practices and strategies. All materials are drawn from Cornell Library’s Human Sexuality Collection.

Exhibition curators: Kate Addleman-Frankel, Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography, Johnson Museum of Art, and Brenda Marston, Curator of the Human Sexuality Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

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