
B. Nov 3rd, 1943
D. Aug 27th, 2006
Born Linda Tee Athelston Cutchin, in St. Petersburg Florida, Tee Corinne was a pioneer of feminist photography. She held degrees from South Florida University (BA in Printmaking), and the Pratt Institute (MA in Drawing). After moving from Florida to New York City to San Francisco, Corinne finally settled in Sunny Valley, Oregon, where she lived with her partner Beverly Ann Brown (1951-2005), from 1978 until her death in 2006.
Corinne’s Early Life Timeline
1943. Tee is born in Florida, her mother was an artist, and her parents divorced shortly after
1965. Tee graduates from the University of South Florida with a B.A in Printmaking
1966. Tee marries Robert Kamen, they remain together for 6 years.
1968. Tee graduates from the Pratt Institute with an M.A in Drawing
1972. Tee and Robert move to San Francisco where she joins “The Women’s Movement,” she divorces him shortly thereafter.
1975. Tee publically comes out as a lesbian and begins a romance with Honey Lee Cottrell (1946 -2015). They remain together for nearly two years.
1978. Following her split with Honey, Tee moves to Oregon and later joins Rootworks
Shortly after getting her M.F.A in fine art at Pratt, in the early 70’s, Corinne realized that her academic artistic training in drawing and sculpting had trained her solely on depictions of male anatomy. In her 1993 treatise, ‘Artist’s Statement on Sexual Art’ she describes being 27 and using a mirror to look at her genitalia for the first time since she was a child. This realization, and the lack of available imagery, artistic or otherwise, of female anatomy, set her on an creative journey that dominated much of her artistic career. Corinne wrote in her treatise that, “reclaiming labial imagery was a route to claiming personal power for women.” This was her artistic impetus. Even after moving beyond making images of genitalia, Corinne remained focused on creating images that claimed power for women, and represented them as central figures in their own history. For Corinne, writing was yet another avenue for self-representation. Throughout her life she published various essays on the importance of visibility for queer women, musings about living on Womyn’s Lands, commentaries on art and architecture, as well as books of her photographs, drawings, poetry, and short stories. As with her visual arts, the ultimate goal of her writing was to show women to themselves, to convey to them the importance of their minds, bodies, and stories.
Corinne’s Notable Writings/Publishings

Intimacies, 2001

Courting Pleasure, 1994

Women Who Loved Women, 1984

Yantras of Women Love, 1981


Corinne’s first major publication – her coloring book – was the product of her initial experimentations with depicting female anatomy. While living in San Francisco in the mid-70s, Corinne would ask the women in her various feminist groups if she could draw their genitalia for practice, usually gifting them the resulting sketches. Her drawings circulated widely within the community, as women would often frame them or give them as gifts to their partners and friends. It was the increasing popularity of these images that inspired Corinne to gather and publish them as a book. She wrote that the name was chosen for its alliteration – despite the fact that she did not feel “particularly comfortable” with the term – and that the coloring book format was reminiscent of “the ways that, as children, we get to know the world.” The coloring book was an instant success, and was, for many years, the best selling book in feminist bookstores across the nation.
“I [take] pictures… because I need images of women to be part of my heritage as a lesbian. I need models of intelligent determined women who survived, who made their ways in the world, who left an impression, a dent in whatever realities they passed through.
Tee Corinne, “Remembering as a Way of Life”, 1993
Corrine photographed women extensively. Her oeuvre includes a remarkable diversity in her subjects, and she worked actively to depict women in all their forms, both those that looked like her and those that didn’t. After making dozens of images of labias, Corrine began to take photographs of women engaged in acts of intimacy with one another, both those explicit and those relatively tame. A dynamic photographer from the very beginning, she experimented with alternative photographic techniques to add complexity to what are otherwise straightforward images of anatomy and intimacy. As Corinne grew as a photographer and in her identity as a lesbian, she experimented more with form, staging interactions between women’s bodies which highlighted their intimacy with one another without relying directly on picturing intimate acts. Corrine created the images she longed to see as a young person, and a young lesbian. Her body of work depicts the possibilities of the female body and female intimacy, from the perspective of a woman discovering both for the very first time. Her innovative use of experimental photography techniques does not function to negate of the explicicity of their subjects, instead it transforms the photographs, giving them a sense of transcendence beyond what is visible to the naked eye.

This photograph was taken in 1981 during the final photography ovular Corinne hosted with Ruth Mountaingrove at Rootworks. It is difficult to say whether the picture was staged by Corinne for her own purposes, or if she was acting as a documentarian, capturing the process of one of her students. Irregardless of who was staging the image, the moment that has been captured is one of tenderness. The women sit in a posture that is not quite natural, leaning in towards one another and drawing the eye of the viewer up, to the space in which their heads join, bent, and they seem to rest. Corinne is finely attuned towards the ways in which people, women, interact with one another, and is inviting us to observe this fleeting moment of connection.

Early in her career, Corinne experimented heavily with collage as a medium for creating images of female genitalia. In this picture, two of her photographs have been layered into one another, the resulting product a dream-like landscape of sorts, obfuscating the subject. This visual dissonance requires the viewer to linger with the image, puzzling out the individual components until one is left with a strikingly detailed image of a labia. The nearly seamless transition between image layers highlights Corinne’s skill in the darkroom.

Corinne often used solarization to obscure the identities of the women in her photographs. This process involves exposing the developing image to light, often in a single short burst, to reverse the tones, creating an X-ray like effect. The solarization effect also works to intercept the gaze of the unwanted voyeur– you may access the image but it won’t be made easy for you. The results of solarization are unpredictable, and achieving a consistent effect across many different images is a remarkable feat.

As Corinne grew as an artist and photographer she began to experiment with form. Photos such as this one are the result of careful choreographing by Corinne, a marked departure from the seemingly spontaneous moments between couples that she had been capturing previously. She begins to push the boundaries of the body, and the possible ways in which two people can interact with each other physically. The resulting image is halfway between yoga and intimacy, as the woman below concentrates to support the weight of her partner as she arcs her body down towards her. Usually, the women in Corinne’s images are looking at each other– here they are not.
What I wanted to do was create pictures of the beauty of how people look, how the human body looks… I [don’t] care so much for the emphasis on voyeurism,”
Tee Corinne, Artist’s Statement on Sexual Art, 1991
Despite the groundbreaking nature of her work, her numerous self-publications, and wide circulation in lesbian and feminist magazines and newspapers, Corrine’s work never achieved the sort of recognition from the mainstream art world that some of her peers, like J.E.B (1944 – ), were able to achieve. Even today her contributions are overlooked– she has never had a major retrospective and no major institutions own any of her photographs. It was only this year, 2024, that the first major catalog of her work, A Forest Fire Between Us, edited by Charlotte Flint, was formally published.




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All images on this page © Tee A. Corinne / Tee A. Corinne Papers, Coll. 263. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Archives