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CALENDAR OF EVENTS
The Dyke Show Live! JEB’s Valentine to the Queer Community
February 9, 8:00 pm-10:00 pm
The Dyke Show Live! JEB's Valentine to the Queer Community
Free with RSVP: PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT. FOR WAITLIST PLEASE EMAIL RMORALES@GAYCENTER.ORG
ABOUT THE EVENT
For the first time in 39 years, JEB (Joan E. Biren) will give a live presentation of the restored version of her original epic slide show with a new introduction and epilogue. From 1979-1984, JEB performed The Dyke Show more than 80 times to packed audiences at community spaces and universities across the US and Canada. Originally titled Lesbian Images in Photography: 1850–1984, the show includes portraits, documentary and erotic images by historic and contemporary photographers ranging from Alice Austen and Berenice Abbott to Tee Corinne and Leigh Mosley. JEB’s narration is a unique fusion of art history, activist inspiration and stand-up comedy.
Recently, the revived Dyke Show was reviewed as "an astounding compendium of lesbian imagery and ideas” by Glen Helfand (Aperture.org). In 2016, Sophie Hackett wrote that "it is important to note how radical it was to even publicly contemplate a question like is there a lesbian aesthetic?….to impart a new way of looking, a queer way of looking" in Aperture (#218).
This live event will be audio-recorded and edited into the digital restoration of the original Dyke Show. It will be on view as part of Images on which to build, 1970s-1990s, an exhibition curated by Ariel Goldberg that highlights educational photographic projects within grassroots trans and queer organizing. The exhibit opens on March 10 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and is on view through July 30, 2023.
The 5-year run of The Dyke Show started as a promotional book tour for JEB's self-published Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians. The book has since been reissued to wide acclaim by Anthology Editions and will be for sale at the event.
BIO
JEB is an artist and activist who has challenged the representation of lesbians, the way we understand photographic history, and how we speak about image-making. Her first book, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, originally published in 1979, was reissued in 2021 by Anthology Editions. JEB's second book, Making a Way: Lesbians Out Front, produced while on tour with The Dyke Show, will also be reissued by Anthology. In the 1970s, JEB was a part of two lesbian collectives: The Furies, which produced an influential newspaper that first published JEB's work, and Moonforce Media, which distributed feminist films. In the early 1990s, JEB transitioned from making photographic stills and slide shows to filmmaking. Her films on LGBTQ+ history are available through Frameline distribution. JEB's photographic work is in many collections including the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany.