Self-portrait for photo class assignment, 1974. Her shadow following a man with a wrinkled coat and a cardboard box on Market St., San Francisco, near her home. "The transients on Market Street were my friends. The area was my home. I took my pictures there."
Self-portrait for photo class assignment, 1974. Her shadow following a man with a wrinkled coat and a cardboard box on Market St., San Francisco, near her home. "The transients on Market Street were my friends. The area was my home. I took my pictures there."
Cottrell's thoughts about this image: "Back in 1974, when Iwas still meditating on how to make this quantum leap from waitress tophotographer with the added complication of having just been extricated from adeeply dependent relationship with another woman, I was given a photo classassignment to do a roll (36 exposures) of self-portraits. I was living in atiny studio apartment near the Greyhound Bus Station at 7th and Market Streetsin San Francisco. The transients on Market Street were my friends. The area wasmy home. I took my pictures there.The first pictureshows my shadow following a man with a wrinkled coat and a cardboard box. Iwatched this street bum in amazement as he negotiated his way down MarketStreet, totally unaware that there were other people on the street and everyoneelse was agreeing with him by not noticing that he was there. This shadowportrait seemed to me, then, to be an appropriate self-portrait. Now it seemsto be what it feels like (then and now) to be not noticed as a dyke; how we allagree not to see me when I dress and act and say that I am a lesbian.The second picture isa much more explicit document of this Market Street reality: how my streetattitude and dress appear and how people don't look. I am aware of noticingwhat is happening even if the man scurrying past is not. If I turned this photoloose on the heterosexual world, would they remember the times that theyrefused to recognize my sexual preference, or would it be an amusing view ofdeviant behavior?Not knowing theanswer to this question is one of the reasons I haven't shown it to anyoneexcept friends."https://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/corinne/Cottrell.htm
Cite As:
Honey Lee Cottrell Papers, #7822. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
