Honey Lee Cottrell, Pioneering Lesbian Erotica Photographer, Dead at 69

Honey Lee Cottrell, a pioneering photographer and filmmaker in the genre of lesbian erotica, has died at age 69.

Cottrell died of pancreatic cancer September 21 in Santa Cruz, Calif., according to a press release from Cornell University, where Cottrell, in one of her last acts, had donated her archives to the library’s Human Sexuality Collection.

Cottrell “revolutionized the female nude, validated women’s right to pleasure, and opened possibilities for women to see themselves and their desires in new ways through her engagement in a variety of feminist, artistic, and sex education projects,” according to Cornell.

She was a contributing photographer to the women’s erotica magazine On Our Backs for seven years, beginning with its first issue, in 1984. She proposed a Bulldagger of the Month centerfold for the magazine because, as she later explained, she wanted “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?” She was one of the “core four” of On Our Backs, the others being Debi Sundahl, Nan Kinney, and Susie Bright. Her photography has also been featured in many books and gallery exhibitions.

“The whole notion of people who were unseen was something that motivated her throughout her life, from the time she came out in 1966. She didn’t see images of lesbians so she wanted to create them,” said Brenda Marston, curator of the Human Sexuality Collection. “Part of her intent all along was to leave a record.”

In the 1970s, Cottrell had studied at the National Sex Forum and was a member of San Francisco Sex Information. She coauthored I Am My Lover, a 1978 feminist book celebrating masturbation, and she was an early member of the Lesbian and Gay History Project, founded in late 1978 in San Francisco.

A native of Astoria, Ore., she spent most of her life in San Francisco. She earned a B.A. in film studies from San Francisco State University in 1981. She was director and camera operator for the 1980 erotic film Sweet Dreams, starring Pat Califia, and from 1985 to the early 1990s, she was a cinematographer for Fatale Video, the first film company to focus on lesbian-created erotica.

To support herself, she worked on ships as a member of the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, traveling to the South Pacific, and later was a banquet waiter in San Francisco, retiring in 2012. The latter job was also unionized — with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union — and Cottrell was a longtime labor activist, speaking out and walking picket lines to protest mistreatment of workers.

Cottrell’s life partners included Bright, Melinda Gebbe, and Amber Hollibaugh. She and Bright had a daughter together, Aretha. She is also survived by her mother and brother.