Mexican Summer & Anthology

JEB (Joan E. Biren) first introduced viewers to her photographs in 1979 when she published Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, a groundbreaking celebration of women loving women. In the years that followed, JEB collaborated with poets, musicians, filmmakers, elected officials, healthcare providers, factory workers, spiritual leaders, and others who built communities and worked for political change. Her second book Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front, published in 1987, depicts the spirit and energy of this movement in more than a hundred emotionally resonant photographs that take us from passionate activism to thoughtful solitude, while remarks and remembrances from each woman photographed deepen the historic record. This reissue of Making a Way adds insightful new essays by Cheryl Clarke and JD Samson, resulting in an essential document of an era whose impact continues to be felt across our society today.

JEB (Joan E. Biren) has been influential by actively challenging the representation of lesbians, the way we understand photographic history, and how we speak about image-making. She has documented LGBTQI+ lives and communities since the 1970s, publishing groundbreaking books and making award-winning films. Her first book, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, was reissued to international acclaim in 2021 by Anthology Editions. The Dyke Show, a slide presentation JEB toured with through the 1980s, was recently digitized and is now exhibited in video format around the country. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum in NYC, and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis among other places. JEB lives surrounded by chosen family and occasionally tries to retire from media making. Her plan is never to retire from social justice activism.

Making a Way will ship in May.

Hardcover
8.5 inches x 11 inches
144 pages, 109 Images
ISBN: 978-1-944860-66-0