JEBEye to Eye : Portraits of Lesbians

It was 1979 when JEB, self-published her revolutionary book Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, an extensive photographic documentation of the realities of contemporary lesbian life across the US. JEB toured America photographing women like herself, at a time when being out could cost you social and economic exclusion. At the time, she didn’t see her work as art, but as entirely at the service of the lesbian political movement. The republishing of Eye to Eye by Anthology Editions almost forty years later invites us to explore the result of years of careful and close collaboration Jeb led with her subjects. The portraits show lesbians across America as they’d never been seen before: mostly, doing ordinary, everyday activities. In the words of Lola Flash, who signed the introduction of the revived edition: “through photography (JEB) found a way to expand her political view and tackle her desire to make an invisible community visible. JEB employs inclusion – in her words, “the humanity that we share” – as the political foundation that we share.”