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The Power of Women's Voices
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Joan Biren (JEB)
Joan Biren was born in 1944 and grew up in the Washington D.C. area. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1966 and pursued graduate training at Oxford University and the American University. Biren became a member of the Washington, D.C. Women's Liberation group in 1969. One of the first out lesbians in the movement, Biren and others (including Rita Mae Brown and Charlotte Bunch) formed a lesbian-separatist collective, the Furies, in 1971 and published The Furies newspaper. Though the collective was short-lived, it had, through its publications, a significant impact on the strategies of the women's movement.
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JEB in Dyke, Virginia, 1975 (self-portrait)
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Joan E. Biren as a child, undated
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Members of The Furies collective packing papers in their office basement, Washington, D.C., circa 1971
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Biren is best known for her photographic portraits, some of the earliest documents of late 20th-century lesbian life. Acknowledging the need for affirming images and self-expression beyond traditional patriarchal language, her work has appeared in off our backs, The Washington Blade, Gay Community News, and on countless album and book covers. |
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Biren has published two ground-breaking collections of her photography: Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians (Glad Hag Books, 1979) and Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front (Glad Hag Books, 1987).
Rusty, Washington, D.C., 1979 |
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ERA March, Washington, D.C., 1978 |
Darquita and Denyeta, Alexandria, Virginia, 1979 |
Melanie, Lynne, Susie, and Jamey,
Boston, Massachusetts, 1978 |
Priscilla and Regina,
Brooklyn, New York, 1979 |
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I wanted to be a photographer in large part because I needed to see images of lesbians, and it was... a visceral thing. I wanted a reflection of my reality, and I think everybody wants that. My experience is that there's an enormous hunger among people to be able to see themselves. You know, people want to see themselves in photographs, they want to see themselves on TV, they want to see themselves in film. It's always an enormous emotional high the first time you see something that is you in that medium. And that is because there's this huge hunger for the kind of validation that comes from seeing a reflection. And part of why I've devoted my life to what I call 'making the invisible visible' is for that reason.
Joan E. Biren (JEB) interviewed by Kelly Anderson for the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, 27–28 February 2004
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Stormé DeLarverié, New York City, 1986 |
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Michelle Parkerson, co-chair of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians
and Gays,
joins demonstrators near the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C., 1985 |
Anna Marie Rechichi works as a welder for a large crane manufacturer in Cleveland, Ohio, 1986 |
Faith Stayer, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1986 |
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In the 1990s, Biren turned from photography to filmmaking. With Moonforce Media, the company of which she is president, JEB produces, directs and edits videos. She documented both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay rights in For Love and For Life, and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation in A Simple Matter of Justice. More recently she completed an award-winning film on lesbian pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon called No Secret Anymore (2003).
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Images from For Love and For Life flier, 1987 |
Urvashi Vaid in still from
A Simple Matter of Justice, 1993 |
Joan Biren with Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin
filming
No Secret Anymore, 2003 |
Poster for No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon |
Joan Biren speaking to students from the University of Wisconsin in DC., 2008
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Note: all images displayed here are by Joan E. Biren (JEB) unless otherwise noted, and were reproduced from original prints in the Joan E. Biren Papers, or from digital images provided by Biren for the exhibit. The Joan E. Biren Papers, including her photographs and films, are part of the Sophia Smith Collection.
Voices of Feminism Oral History Project
In her oral history Joan Biren describes growing up in a Jewish family in Washington D.C., her education, and her entrance into activism. She reflects on the nuances of class and ethnicity, both in mainstream institutions and in the movement, and on her coming-out process. Biren describes her role in the Furies, the dynamics of the collective and the aftermath of its dissolution, reflecting on its impact on her life and on the larger movement. The interview also focuses on Biren's cultural activism and her work as a photographer. Biren describes the process of finding subjects, her intentions behind the work, and the impact of her photographs. She concludes with a discussion of her current work as a filmmaker in the gay and lesbian community. (Transcript 90 pp.)
Read the full transcript
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