Ms. Corinne was best known for her work as a photographer,although she was also an illustrator, painter, sculptor, poet, and art critic.She broke ground with The Cunt Coloring Book and her frank portrayals of lesbian sexuality.

"Tee Corinne was one of the earliest pioneers of themodern lesbian and women's erotica movements," sex educator GretaChristina wrote in a recent tribute. "She was one of the first women tocreate sexual images and writing for women, from a woman's point of view,outside the male-driven porn machinery."

Ms. Corinne was born on November 3, 1943, in St. Petersburg,Florida, to a mother who was also an artist. She attended Tulane University andSt. Petersburg Junior College before earning her Bachelor of Arts from theUniversity of South Florida. While living in the south, she was active in thecivil rights movement. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the PrattInstitute in New York in 1968, after which she worked as a college art teacher.She was married for seven years before divorcing and coming out as a lesbian inSan Francisco in the early 1970s.

Ms. Corinne – who believed that open depictions oflesbian sexuality were empowering – bridged the divide between thelesbian-feminism of the 1970s and the "sex-positive" feminism of the1980s. The Cunt Coloring Book (firstpublished in 1975, later republished as Labia Flowers) grew out of her work as a sex educator with the SanFrancisco Sex Information Switchboard.

"I explored sensual and sexual imagery, both because Iwas interested in sexuality and because lesbians are so often identified by thewho and what of our sexuality," Ms. Corinne wrote. "I decided tocreate images which brought all of the fine art training at my command intofocusing on the hidden and forbidden activities of lesbian sex."

Ms. Corinne's photography often featured real-life lovers innatural settings, and included fat women, old women, and women of color. Shesometimes used techniques such as reverse printing and collages to createabstract images that obscured the explicit nature of her subjects at firstglance. She once said she wanted her images to create "a rush of desire sointense that the act of looking is sexual."

Ms. Corinne's work appeared in publications as diverse as SinisterWisdom, Bad Attitude, off our backs, On Our Backs, and thegroundbreaking book Our Bodies/Ourselves. Her Yantras of Womanlove(1982) was among the first published books of lesbian erotic photographs. Dreamsof the Woman Who Loved Sex (1987) combinedher photography with fiction and poetry. Some of her later work dealt withgrowing up in an alcoholic family.

Ms. Corinne illustrated numerous book covers for NaiadPress, as well as album covers for Holly Near and other women musicians. Noteveryone appreciated her frankness, however, and she sometimes had troublegetting printers to publish her work and finding community venues willing toshow it. A strong opponent of censorship, Ms. Corinne's popularity underwent aresurgence with the new a wave of explicit lesbian erotica in the late 1980s.

"Every new generation of lesbian photographers whofollow her look back on her work as some sort of norm – the basic lesbianphotograph," wrote Susie Bright in Nothing But the Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image (1996).

In the late 1990s, the Traditional Values Coalition includedMs. Corinne's work in a sampling of what it called "pornography"obtained from the James Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the San FranciscoPublic Library, in an attempt to derail Hormel's nomination as ambassador toLuxembourg.

Ms. Corinne was known as a supporter of up-and-cominglesbian artists. She co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the College ArtAssociation and the lesbian and bisexual group of the Women's Caucus for Art.She reviewed art books for Feminist Bookstore News and other publications, curated numerous art shows,and spoke at many academic conferences on art, history, and women's studies. In1991, Lambda Book Report namedher as one of the 50 most influential lesbians and gay men of the decade.

In March of this year, Ms. Corinne learned that she hadadvanced liver cancer. During her final months, she was looked after in herhome by a devoted group of volunteer caregivers.

Donations in her memory may be made to the Tee A. CorinnePrize for Lesbian Media Artists, a newly established fund created by MoonforceMedia (www.jebmedia.com ) P.O. Box 13375,Silver Spring, MD 20911).

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