Honey Lee Cottrell, who pioneered lesbian erotica in the 1980s through her contributions to the women's sex magazine On Our Backs , died September 21 in Santa Cruz, California. She was 69.
The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Cornell University, where Ms. Cottrell's papers will be held.
Ms. Cottrell revolutionized the female nude, validated women's right to pleasure, and opened possibilities for women to see themselves and their new desires in new ways through her engagement in a variety of feminist, artistic, and sex education projects.
Ms. Cottrell studied at the National Sex Forum and was a member of San Francisco Sex Information in the 1970s. She was an early member of the Lesbian and Gay History Project, founded in late 1978 in San Francisco.
She was one of the "core four," along with Debi Sundahl, Nan Kinney, and Susie Bright, who gave On Our Backs its style and success. When the magazine started in 1984, Ms. Cottrell proposed a "Bulldagger of the Month" centerfold for the first issue. She explained that the idea was "to stand this Playboy centerfold idea on its head from, I would say, a feminist perspective ... what would I do if I was a centerfold and how can I reflect back to them our values?" Her idea was not to be "the regular kind of centerfold, but something that will make a difference, shake people up, show the other side of the mirror." Ms. Cottrell was a contributing photographer to the magazine for seven years.
She photographed her lovers and friends and documented queer and kink cultures for decades with her first camera, a 35 mm Nikkormat. She was exacting and precise in the photographs and collages she created, as well as in her darkroom work. She studied with Ruth Bernhard, who invited Ms. Cottrell to be her printer. In addition to On Our Backs and the 1978 feminist book she co-authored, I Am My Lover , her still photography has appeared in publications including The Blatant Image, Coming to Power, Sinister Wisdom , and Nothing But the Girl .
Born in Astoria, Oregon on January 16, 1946, the elder of two children, she grew up in Michigan. After completing a year at Michigan State University in 1964-65, Ms. Cottrell worked at the Technicolor photo-processing lab. As she later learned, a number of lesbians were working there, having discovered it was a fairly safe place for butch women to work. Ms. Cottrell was invited to visit one of these women, Harriet DeVito, who had moved to New York City, and then ended up driving across the country with her to California in 1966. Along the way, Ms. Cottrell discovered what her feelings for women meant to her, and DeVito became her first lover.
Once Ms. Cottrell arrived in San Francisco, she made it her home and became deeply involved in the creative lesbian community of artists, photographers, and filmmakers in the Bay Area, as well as the progressive sex education activists. She opened her apartment on Bessie Street to friends and artists, helping find jobs and shelter for people in need.
To support her artistic work, Ms. Cottrell worked in two unions. As a member of the Marine Cooks and Stewards, she was able to fulfill her dream to travel to the South Pacific where her father, Duane Cottrell, had served in World War II. She worked as a banquet waiter in the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union in the 1980s and 1990s, retiring in 2012. A proud union member, she walked many a picket line protesting the mistreatment of workers, especially recent immigrant populations working as room cleaners at San Francisco hotels.
"[Honey Lee] was never someone who put herself out front," anthropologist and theorist of sex and gender politics Gayle Rubin said in a statement. "She was more of a quiet observer, but a persistently potent presence. She had a kind of strength and solidarity that seemed to anchor things around her; as if she provided the gravity that held various circling planets in their stable orbits. And she just kept generating images, events, relationships, connections."
Ms. Cottrell loved the outdoors and studied herbal medicine, native plants, and botany. With this perspective and her photographer's training to notice interesting small moments of daily life, she went through her illness and death with a combination of butch swagger and serenity, a confidence that everything would be all right. She continued to direct photo shoots and art installations.
Two weeks before her death, Ms. Cottrell had the energy one day for a road trip, lunch at a favorite Middle Eastern deli with longtime and new friends, and a walk in the redwoods, said Brenda J. Marston of Cornell. No one was surprised that she crawled under caution tape and a Do Not Enter sign to get to her favorite tree, a spot where she had often brought her daughter, Aretha Bright.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recognized Ms. Cottrell with Certificate of Honor September 8.
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Cottrell is survived by her mother, Patricia Cottrell; brother, Michael Cottrell; and life companions, Melinda Gebbe, Amber Hollibaugh, and Susie Bright.