Perhaps because of advances made by the gay and lesbian liberation movements, Rollie McKenna (b. 1918)--best known for her photographic studies of Dylan Thomas--could write in 1991 of involvements with both men and women.

Likewise, at the end of the twentieth century, Ruth Bernhard (b. 1905) felt free to write of her relationships with women and with an African-American man; and the biographer of Germaine Krull (1897-1985) could write in an unapologetic way of Krull's one affair with a married woman (amid many with male lovers).

Sponsor Message.

The transition to the increased openness of the late twentieth century is most apparent in the images of Kay Tobin Lahusen (b. 1930), which were published in the lesbian publication The Ladder between 1964 and 1966. Tobin Lahusen's lover, Barbara Gittings, was the magazine's editor and often appeared in her photographs.

Tobin Lahusen's work was the first by an openly lesbian photographer to be published in the United States. At first, lesbians would only pose back-to-camera, in silhouette, or with sunglasses.

Although much has changed in the availability of images of openly lesbian women, in the early twenty-first century most lesbian photographers who have gained mainstream success remain closeted.

Although sparse in images documenting the gay community, pre-Stonewall gay male photography blurs the boundaries between art, erotica, and social history.

Since Stonewall lesbian photographers have created an enduring archive that documents lesbian lives, searches for a lesbian sensibility, and explores various issues of particular import to the lesbian community.

While nude depictions of women appear in most cultures, on both sides of the equator, and in rich variety, lesbian artists have been particularly resourceful in their use of the female nude.

American photographer Berenice Abbott made memorable images of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men in Paris in the 1920s and in New York from the 1930s through 1965.

Best known as editor of the early twentieth-century literary journal The Little Review, Margaret Anderson also published a frank lesbian novel and a three-volume autobiography.

One of the first American women to become a photographer, Alice Austen defied conventions and challenged stereotypes in nearly every aspect of her life.

American novelist Djuna Barnes sought new forms of self-representation of lesbians in the face of society's compulsory heterosexuality.

In addition to being the muse and inspiration of other writers, American expatriate Natalie Barney, known as the Amazon, was a poet, memoirist, and epigrammatist in her own right.

Through her Parisian bookshop and her editorial work, American expatriate and lesbian Sylvia Beach did much to influence the course of modern literature.

Ruth Bernhard is one of the preeminent twentieth-century photographers of the nude female.

The female nudes and portraits of cross-dressed women made American artist Romaine Brooks's lesbian identity known to the world.

Photographer, photo collagist, writer, and translator Claude Cahun is known today primarily for creating images, including self-portraits, that play with concepts of gender.

An expatriate journalist, novelist, and translator, Janet Flanner spent most of her adult life in Paris with her lover Solita Solano.

Though she was an accomplished and respected photojournalist, Gisèle Freund is today best remembered as a chronicler of the vibrant bohemian community of artists and writers that made its home in Paris during the 1930s.

American-born artist Florence Henri produced a wide range of photography in the 1920s and 1930s, including still lifes, portraits, nudes, advertising images, and photomontages.

Pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston served as the official White House photographer during several administrations and earned fame as a photojournalist and documentary photographer.

Best known for her relationship with Virginia Woolf and for her scandalous love affairs, Vita Sackville-West was a prolific author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Swiss writer and photojournalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach documented social conditions from Afghanistan to Alabama; her fiction reflected the tormented attachments and recurring loneliness that plagued her short lifetime.

One of the foremost practitioners of pictorial photography in the United States, Clara Sipprell also produced portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and female nudes.

Renée Vivien, who had many affairs with women, openly celebrated lesboerotic love in her poetry and dreamed of women-controlled spaces in an era when most women were still domestically confined.

Passionate friendships with women were essential to the life and work of novelist Virginia Woolf.

The prize-winning novelist Marguerite Yourcenar reflected her own homosexuality in her works almost exclusively through male characters, most notably in Memoirs of Hadrian.