Photo Collection
Our photographic collection invaluably represents Lesbian lives and Lesbian herstory—mostly, but not exclusively, focusing on the twentieth century.
In 1979, the Archives officially put out a call to gather images to “end the legacy of lost faces.” Since then, the collection has been growing and growing: it includes thousands of images, including portraits, self-portraits, snapshots, high-end prints, negatives, slides, photo albums, scrapbooks, documentary photography, contact sheets and postcards. Much of the photographic material came to us from donors who wanted their images saved and their lives remembered. The collection also features the work of both locally and internationally renowned photographers and artists, such as Tee Corinne and Morgan Gwenwald, for whom the Archives has been instrumental to support and inspire their vision. Our albums and binders usually contain the work of a specific photographer or personal photos documenting the people and events in a particular Lesbian’s life. In addition, some of the binders hold slides of artists’ work. The diversity of backgrounds and materials makes this collection unique and a vital source of Lesbian visual narratives.
This collection lives in the dining room, beside the long table, in a black filing cabinet and also a glass-doored closet to the left-hand of a cabinet. Both the cabinet and the closet are the physical spaces where most of the on-site photographic material is stored, yet there are also framed and unframed photographs scattered throughout the Archives, from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bookshelves, creating a feeling of being at home. Honoring the mission of the Archives to collect and preserve Lesbian herstories against invisibility, the Archivettes, along with long-term volunteers and interns, have been tirelessly working to create an inventory and digitize parts of the collection. This is an ongoing project, with boxes of photographs yet to be processed—the care for the photographic collection requires money, time, specialized equipment, and lots of work. New materials come into the collection all the time.
For in depth research you can make an appointment with the photo coordinator via images@lesbianherstoryarchives.org, for remote basic browsing we have created an Online Photo Sampler.
The Sampler is a collection of images we digitized for a variety of reasons, often because they were requested by publishers or other institutions. There are random images, there are samples of collections such as the Bettye Lane collection, and there are images illustrating demonstrations, cultural events, members of the community, as well as vernacular photography.
For on-site casual browsing we have prepared a collection of binders, situated on top of the file cabinet, which you can browse at the long table. These binders will give you an indication of the types of images you can expect to find in the broader Archives collection.
All images are protected by our agreements with donors, which outlines how the materials can be used. We do not have the copyright for most of the images and we do not share files for commercial use. If you want to use an image please email us with the specific request with the details and we will look into what is available. And if you have more information than what is listed about an image, we welcome that input as well. The email address for all image info is images@lesbianherstoryarchives.org
We do not allow our image collection to be used for AI training.