News release from photographer Ellen Shumsky:
New visual memoir by lesbian activist photographer presents powerful iconic images capturing the early years of the gay and lesbian liberation movements.
“An absorbing visual memoir, artful camerawork framing unique personal and political journeys…Fran Winant, Poet and artist
July 2009 – New York City.
Portrait of a Decade: 1968 – 1978, (Photographs by Ellen Shumsky, Introduced and Edited by Flavia Rando, Ph.D.) is a collection of 116 black and white photographs in book form, that captures the spirit and immediacy of a tumultuous decade through the vehicle of a personal odyssey. The narrative thread begins in the serene timelessness of a small village in Southern France where the author studied photography, and moves outward along with her to the streets of Paris for the students and workers uprising in 1968, the Cuban Venceremos brigade, the American Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, The Womens Liberation Movement, and on to the heart of the book - the authors participation in and documentation of the post-Stonewall Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movements of the early 70’s. This book is unique and important as a woman/lesbian’s eye view of this historical material. It includes the only published collection of photos documenting the Radicalesbians – an intimate series of portraits of life in that revolutionary community.
The book begins with a personal essay contextualizing the images within an autobiographical rendering of the author’s life, followed by an introductory essay by Flavia Rando, P.hD. art historian and Gay Studies scholar, that lends a cultural/historical perspective to the project.This is a timely and important collection in the 40th year of the anniversary of Stonewall, as the issue of gay marriage assumes center stage in the national political arena. 45 of these images are on display at the LGBT Center in NYC through the summer of 1969.
Author’s Bio
In 1969, on the heels of the Stonewall riots, Ellen Shumsky, a young photographer, embraced the self chosen mission of documenting, as an activist insider, the development of the Gay Liberation Movement. Her images were published (under the name Ellen Bedoz) in many underground newspapers and counterculture anthologies of that time including COME OUT! and RAT. She was a founding member of Radicalesbians and a co-author of the Lesbian Feminist Manifesto “The Woman Identified Woman.” For the past thirty years she has been a psychoanalytic writer and teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice in NYC.Portrait of a Decade: 1968 – 1978. Photographs by Ellen Shumsky. Edited and Introduced by Flavia Rando. Graeae Press, 2009. ISBN 0-9745403-3-1
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In 1969 following the Stonewall riots, Ellen Shumsky, a photographer, embraced the self chosen mission of documenting, as an activist insider, the development of the Gay Liberation Movement. Her images were published (under the name Ellen Bedoz) in many underground newspapers and counterculture anthologies of that time including COME OUT! and RAT. She was a founding member of Radicalesbians and a co-author of the Lesbian Feminist Manifesto “The Woman Identified Woman.” For the past thirty years she has been a psychoanalytic writer and teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice in NYC.
“An absorbing visual memoir, artful camerawork framing unique personal and political journeys……Fran Winant, Poet and artist
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