Tee Corinne

Tee A. Corinne (November 3, 1943 – August 27, 2006) was an American photographer, author, and editor notable for the portrayal of sexuality in her artwork.

According to Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia, "Corinne is one of the most visible and accessible lesbian artists in the world."

Linda Tee Athelston Cutchin was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, to Thomas Barnes Cutchin and Marjorie Isabelle Meares.

She grew up in Florida and North Carolina.

In 1945, when Corinne was two years old, her parents got divorced.

One year later, her mother remarried William T. McClellan.

The two were alcoholics, which would later influence Corinne's mixed media show "Family: Growing Up in an Alcoholic Family."

At age three-and-a-half, Corinne was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

She spent three months recovering in a nursing home and nineteen months with her grandparents in Yankeetown, Florida, where she grew to love country living.

She was not permitted to resume normal activity until age eight.

Corinne's mother was also an artist.

She introduced Corinne to the basic principles and techniques for making visual art.

According to Corinne, "I have seldom succeeded in keeping a diary, but I have almost always carried a drawing pad, and since my eighth year, I have also had a camera."

As a teenager, Corinne became aware that she was attracted to both men and women.

At boarding school in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, she discovered that she thrived in an academically and artistically rigorous environment.

At graduation, she won the school’s art award and a National Journalism award for work on the school newspaper.

Corinne began exhibiting and publishing art and writing in the mid-1960s.

Corinne spent her first year of college (1962–63) studying art at Newcomb College in New Orleans, LA, where she studied painting with Ida Kohlmeyer.

She then transferred back to Florida, where she earned a B.A. in printmaking and painting (with minors in English and history) from University of South Florida.

She graduated in 1965.

In 1966, she married Robert Kamen who she says was her "best friend."

Corinne went on to get an M.F.A. in drawing and sculpture at Pratt Institute in 1968.

After a few years of teaching and backpacking in Europe, she became attracted to the back-to-the-land movement and communal living.

She was also, in her words, sliding into suicidal depression.

She stopped making art when she and Kamen moved to San Francisco in 1972.

She changed her life, writing, "I found therapy, separated from my husband, became involved with women, and joined with the Women’s Movement. I felt better".

She publicly came out as a lesbian in 1975 with her then-partner, Honey Lee Cottrell.

Her first notable work was in 1975, and is still in print today.

Aged 27, she realised that although her art education had enabled her to depict male genitals, she had not observed her own since she was a child.

"I knew that the things we don't have names for, or images of, are the ones we label crazy or bad. I believed that reclaiming labial imagery was a route to claiming personal power for women."

She decided to produce artistic images of vulvas, and self-published the Cunt Coloring Book, reclaiming the word "cunt"; it was later issued by a publisher as Labiaflowers.

They remained together until 1977.

She was a co-facilitator of the Feminist Photography Ovulars (1979–1981) and a co-founder of The Blatant Image, A Magazine of Feminist Photography (1981–1983).

She was the author of one novel, three collections of short stories, four books of poetry and numerous artists books and small edition publications.

In 1980, she was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the Great American Lesbian Art Show.

She became adept at representing lesbian sexuality in ways that would elude the male gaze.

In 1982, she produced a series of photographs called Yantras of Womanlove.

Concerned with protecting the privacy of her models, she used techniques involving multiple prints, solarization, images printed in negative, and multiple exposures.

Tee consistently and conscientiously included women of color, large women, older women, and women with disabilities as her subjects.

Sometimes printers would refuse to print her works and art galleries would refuse to show it.