Scope and content
The Honey Lee Cottrell papers document the personal life and professional work of photographer Honey Lee Cottrell, dating 2950-2015. The collection includes many test prints, notes about how to print particular images, items collected for collage projects, event publicity flyers, and files of collaboration with Tee Corinne, Susie Bright, Joani Blank, Shar Rednour, Jackie Strano, Phyllis Christopher (friend and staff photographer for the periodical On Our Backs), and others. Also included are 19 black and white photos by Honey Lee Cottrell, 4 strips of contact prints, and a Tee Corinne image possibly printed by Cottrell. Subjects include Seeley, lesbians on California whitewater rafting trips organized by Seeley, Maxine Feldman (San Francisco, March 1977), and 2 images from Seeley and Cottrell's trip to Europe. Also, 4 color photographs by Marsha Seeley of Cottrell and Maxine Feldman, San Francisco, March 1977. Susie Bright, in April 2025, visited RMC and described photographs from the #7788, Susie Bright papers and On Our Backs records, boxes 13, 14, and 2424B, as well as #7822, Honey Lee Cottrell papers, Boxes 4 and 6. The digital files are available upon request.
Dates
- 1950-2015.
Creator
- Cottrell, Honey Lee. (Person)
- S.I.R. Productions (Organization)
Language of Materials
Collection material in English
Biographical / Historical
Honey Lee Cottrell (1946-2015) was a noted photographer who helped define lesbian erotica in the 1980s through her contributions to the women's sex magazine On Our Backs over its first seven years. She studied at the National Sex Forum and was a volunteer switchboard operator at San Francisco Sex Information. Her photographs appeared in I Am My Lover (1979), Coming to Power (1981), A Dykes Bike Repair Handbook (1990), and Nothing But the Girl (1996), as well as in magazines including The Blatant Image and Sinister Wisdom. In 1981, Cottrell received a BA in film studies from San Francisco State University. She was director and camera for Sweet Dreams starring Pat Califia (National Sex Forum, 1980), and from 1985 to the early 90s, a cinematographer for Fatale Video, the first lesbian-created erotic movie company. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she also collaborated on erotic and sex education videos of interest to lesbians and others produced by S.I.R. (Sex Indulgence & Rock.n Roll), a video production company run by Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano. She took photos of Susie Bright and Shar Rednour for their book covers. She photographed her lovers and friends and documented queer and kink cultures for decades with her first camera, a 35 mm Nikkormat.
Extent
4.1 cubic feet. (4.1 cubic feet.)
Abstract
Personal papers and photographic archives.
Existence and Location of Copies
Digital scans of some photographs are also available through the digital portal.
SEPARATED MATERIAL
Books - cataloged individually in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
- The Blatant Image: A Magazine of Feminist Photography, no. 2, 1982 ( with 2 images by Honey Lee Cottrell and a note by her on the inside cover. Self-portrait on p. 16 and her portrait of Jeanette Foster on p. 30.)
- Gayle, Marilyn What Lesbians Do, 1975 (inscribed and signed by the author and artist Barbary)
Physical Description
Photographs, artwork, and printed materials.
General
- Contact Information:
- Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections 2B Carl A. Kroch Library Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3530 Fax: (607) 255-9524rareref@cornell.eduhttp://rmc.library.cornell.edu
- Compiled by:
- Marcie Farwell, September 2015
- Date completed:
- September 2015
- EAD encoding:
- Marcie Farwell, September 2015
- Date modified:
- Marcie Farwell, October 2018
NOTES
Collecting program: Human Sexuality Collection.
- Bright, Susie, 1958-
- Butch and femme (Lesbian culture).
- Califia, Patrick, 1954-
- Christopher, Phyllis, 1963-
- Corinne, Tee, 1943-2006.
- Erotica
- Feminism
- Hollibaugh, Amber L., 1946-
- Kinney, Nan.
- Lesbians -- Pictorial works.
- On our backs.
- Photography of women.
- Photography, Erotic.
- Pornographic films.
- Pornography.
- Rubin, Gayle.
- Sex industry
- Sex instruction
- Sundahl, Deborah.
- Williams, Rachael
- Women -- Sexual behavior.
- Women-owned business enterprises.
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Compiled by RMC Staff
- Date
- September 2015
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
Revision Statements
- 12/07/2018: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
Repository Details
Part of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections Repository
2B Carl A. Kroch Library
Cornell University
Ithaca NY 14853
607-255-3530
607-255-9524 (Fax)
rareref@cornell.edu