Two Chicago women Norma and Virginia have left the LGBTQ community an amazing historical treasure.
They died when they were in their 80s, leaving behind piles and boxes of snapshots of themselves and their friends that span four decades from the mid 1930s to the 1970s in East Rogers Park. The photos provide a rare look at a vanished and vibrant Lesbian culture: images of lovers and friends as they played, posed, worked, partied, drank, and aged.
"While doing background research for my interactive narrative Mixed Greens I met Patrick Gourley. I was looking for old photographs that would help me understand lesbian life in Chicago in the 1950s and early 60s. "I have a whole houseful of photos and objects," said Patrick. He wasn't kidding. He had been a friend and caretaker of two elderly lesbians during the last decade of their lives. Patrick showed me the boxes of snapshots. Norma and Virginia used a Brownie camera to tell the story of lesbian and gay holiday feasts in rented halls, a faithful group of friends serially switching partners, and women holding hands in the crowded parks of Chicago. When I saw the photos I knew I had to make a film about them."
The photographs haunt me. As a young lesbian I knew women like Norma and Virginia. As a lesbian of a later generation I live a mainstreamed life in a different world my partner and I can marry if we choose. We have gained so much, yet some things were lost. Lives:Visible acknowledges the rewards and price of both the closet and assimilation."
Michele has launched a crowd-funding finish the film via the Chicago-based non-profit, 3Arts.
3arts.org/projects/lives-visible .
"With your support, we can let the lesbians out of the box so this important hidden history won't fade away," says Citron.
A professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia College in Chicago, Citron is an "internationally renowned feminist filmmaker whose work, 'Daughter Rite,' is considered a groundbreaking movie.
Citron's work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Walker Art Center, and in the Berlin, London, Edinburgh, and New Directors film festivals.