User:Rct97/sandbox

History
Many lesbian women find employment and creative fulfillment as photographers. While lesbians have taken photographs since the medium was invented in 1839, many 19th and early 20th century work by lesbian photographers has been lost, destroyed, or never published because of social stigma against lesbian women. Professional lesbian photographers may have also hidden their sexuality. While all women who worked as professional photographers were seen as as defying gender norms, lesbians may have embraced the photography profession as a way to earn money without depending on men. Emma Jean Gay (1830-1919) is the earliest known lesbian photographer.

Lesbians also took photos to experiment with self-expression. Lesbians took photos of themselves, their friends, and their lovers embracing each other in intimate settings which hinted at same-sex relationships without being explicitly erotic. Alice Austen (1866-1952) took photos of her friends wearing men's clothing or participating in traditional masculine activities such as smoking. These images were predominantly not for commercial use, instead existing as personal mementos the photographers and models shared with one another.

Post-Stonewall
In the late twentieth century, the second wave feminist movement in the United States and the gay liberation movement following the Stonewall riots inspired efforts to create a cohesive lesbian identity with dedicated cultural artifacts such as explicitly lesbian art, including lesbian photography. These images developed new artistic trends, including depictions of sexual activity and genitalia. Joan. E. Biren (b. 1944) published the first photo anthology of lesbians portraits, Eye to Eye, Portraits of Lesbians, in 1979. Other influential lesbian photographers include Tee Corinne (1943-2006) and Cathy Cade (b. 1942).

Scholars have argued that lesbian artists and activists during the 1970s and 1980s intentionally labeled their art as "lesbian art" in order to foster a sense of community that was distinct from the broader feminist movement. Jan Zita Grover argued that the lesbian identity depicted by this art movement was culturally specific to colonizer societies like the United States and the United Kingdom, was thus not representative of indigenous systems of gender and sexuality.