B. Feb 21st, 1923
D. Dec 18th, 2016
Born Ruth Shook, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ruth Mountaingrove was one of the most prolific documentarians of the lives of queer women. She held degrees from Kutztown State Teacher’s College (BS in Education) and Humboldt State University (MA in Photography, MA in Theater Production). Ruth spent the first half of her life in Philadelphia, later moving to Southern Oregon in 1971 with her partner Jean Mountaingrove (1925-2019). Following their separation in 1985, Ruth moved to Eureka, California, where she lived until her death in 2016.
Mountaingrove’s Early Life Timeline
1923. Ruth is born in Pennsylvania, the daughter of working class parents
1945. Ruth graduates from Kutztown State Teacher’s College with a B.S in Teaching with a focus on English
1946. Ruth marries Ben Ikeler. They have five children, and remain together for nineteen years.
1966. Ruth and Ben divorce. Ruth joins the Pennsylvania chapter of NOW, an organization which advocates for access to abortion.
1968. Ruth joins the staff at Women in Transition, a Philadelphia organization which helps queer women and survivors of domestic violence. She also writes for their newspaper.
1970. Ruth meets Jean, they will remain together for 15 years.
1971. Ruth and Jean move to Mountaingrove, a commune in Southern Oregon, and change their last names.
1974. Ruth and Jean begin publishing WomanSpirit magazine
1978. Ruth and Jean purchase a 7 acre parcel of land in Wolf Creek, Oregon, which they name Rootworks.
Throughout her life, Mountaingrove was an active participant in community organizing. After her divorce in 1966, she joined the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and lobbied with the organization in Washington D.C. for greater abortion access. In 1971, she was hired at Women in Transition, a Philadelphia organization that provided resources to women escaping domestic violence, as well as to queer and trans women. It was her background in community and social work that encouraged her to leave Philadelphia and seek out alternative communities. Mountaingrove was a foundational member of the Oregon Women’s Land Trust (OWL), and, for a period of 12 years, from 1975-1987, she worked to document the lives of the queer women who participated in OWL communities. The result is an astonishingly robust photographic record of what life looked like for these women– the joy they found in living in community with one another, their resourcefulness in homesteading and cultivating their lands, their celebrations and festivals, as well as their hardships, their solemnity, and the realities of their labor.
Ruth & Jean
Ruth and Jean met in 1970, on a Quaker retreat for single parents outside of Philadelphia. Both women had been married to men, had had children, and they were both newly divorced. They bonded quickly over their experience in social work, and their shared, newfound passion for feminist theory. It wasn’t until after moving to Oregon together in 1972, along with 5 of their combined 7 children (3 of Ruth’s, and both of Jean’s), that the two women officially began their relationship, and came out as lesbians. Ruth and Jean took the name of the first commune they lived at, Mountaingrove, as a shared last name. They would both continue to use the name for the rest of their lives, even after separating in 1985. Together, the Mountaingroves built a name for themselves as strong and dedicated leaders– first through the publication of their magazine, WomanSpirit, and later as the founders of Rootworks. They were radical thinkers, deeply committed to freedom and empowerment for women, which, for them, was achieved through the cultivation of women as artists, writers, thinkers, and community leaders.
“The job that all of us have is to build a life-affirming, life-oriented culture, and this is a huge job. We must each work out of our own individual experiences and talents, and out of what we intuitively understand about where we should be.”
Ruth Mountaingrove, interview in Off Our Backs Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, 1967
The full archive of Mountaingrove’s pictures from her time capturing the lives of women living in OWL communities contains well over a thousand images. Her photographs range from slice-of-life documentary pictures, to formalized portraits, candids, and the occasional self portrait. The wide breadth of photos she was able to capture emphasizes her skill as a photographer– she had a keen eye for capturing fleeting moments, and a strong attunement towards scale. Some of her photographs feel situated in a vast expansive landscape that could extend forever, while others seem to exist in a small, intimate reality, outside of the world. This dichotomy no doubt is reflective of how living in these communities made one feel, and Mountaingrove’s ability to convey this emotion through her images is what makes her such a successful documentarian. Additionally, that Mountaingrove was allowed to bring a camera into these intimate spaces, some of which she did not live at, highlights the trust the women in her community had for her; that they would be respected, that their images would be safe, and that they would be well represented– captured in a way that was faithful to who they felt that they were.
This image, of a solstice prayer circle taking place on OWL Farm, is indicative of Mountaingrove’s attunement to scale. The circle of women in the center of the image may rise over seated children, but all the human figures in the photograph seem small within the context of the landscape. The three layers of visible Klamath Mountain Range which occupy the top third of the photograph seem to recede into the distance forever, giving the sense that between each peak there lies a valley just like this one, inhabited by free women, praying.
It is largely because of Mountaingrove’s photographs that we know there were children present at many OWL communities. They are not often written about in the newspapers or magazines which circulated around the country advertising the promises of Womyn’s Lands. However, Mountaingrove herself had her children with her there, and perhaps because of this, took images which depicted the tenderness of raising children amongst the community. Very few of these pictures actually show any children– most likely out of a respect for the privacy of their images– but many, like this one, suggest their presence.
Not all of Mountaingrove’s images were strictly joyful. Some, like this one, feel contemplative, almost solemn. All the light in the images radiates off of the pool in which the woman bathes. She herself is made almost entirely of shadow, as is the landscape behind her. The photograph permanently freezes the moment in time, the drops of water falling through her fingers directly into the center of the light in the middle of the pool. To allow her to observe her, and to capture an image of her bathing in the pool, the woman in this picture would have placed an immense amount of trust in Mountaingrove.
This is one of a handful of images that Ruth captured of Jean. Neither woman seemed to enjoy appearing in pictures, as very few photographs exist of either of the Mountaingroves. In this photograph, Jean is working on constructing the first cabin the women lived in, at Mountaingrove, the site from which they took their name. The land in the image seems very small, and the cabin very large, with Jean hard at work building the promise of their new life together.
Mountaingrove’s work documenting OWL communities is among the first in a long line of queer photographers who chronicled the lives of their friends and loved ones. Nan Goldin‘s (b. 1953) 1985 work, Ballad of Sexual Dependency, comes to mind, as do Robert Mapplethorpe‘s (1946-1989) famous portraits of friends and lovers. However, unlike Goldin and Mapplethorpe, Mountaingrove’s work is almost entirely unrecognized outside of her immediate community. Despite her vast catalog of images, there is virtually no discussion of her in the art historical canon of photography. She has had no retrospectives, her work is not owned by any major or minor institution, and her images are not widely published outside of the magazines she herself made. There are many reasons why this might be the case, first among them that Mountaingrove was working in a rural area, away from the galleries, bookstores, and print shops of any major metropolitan city. There were few places for her to sell her images even if she wanted to. Most importantly, she didn’t want to– Mountaingrove had no interest in national or international acclaim. She took photographs for herself and for the women she knew, as a means of capturing and recording their way of life, not to show to the world, but to show to each other. She circulated these images in feminist publications so that other women would know where they could find community. This is part of what makes Mountaingrove’s work so special, it wasn’t for anyone else. These images were made simply to preserve and commemorate the beauty of the life that these women were able to create with and for one another.
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All images on this page © Ruth Mountaingrove / Oregon Digital Heritage, Lesbian Intentional Community: Ruth Mountaingrove Collection. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Archives