While doing background research for my interactive narrative Mixed Greens I met Patrick Gourley. I was looking for old photographs that would help me understand lesbian life in Chicago in the 1950s and early 60s. “I have a whole houseful of photos and objects,” said Patrick. He wasn’t kidding. He had been a friend and caretaker of two elderly lesbians during the last decade of their lives. He showed me a trove of over 2000 snapshots taken by Norma and Virginia from 1939-1975. When I saw the photos I knew I had to make a film about them. Here were images of lovers and friends as they played, posed, worked, partied, drank, and aged. Norma and Virginia had left an amazing historical treasure.

Snapshots are the way we write our autobiography. Now we all take selfies, but Norma and Virginia used a Brownie camera to tell the story of their community holiday feasts in rented halls, a faithful group of friends serially switching partners, and lesbians holding hands in the crowded parks of Chicago. 

The photographs haunt me. As a young lesbian I knew women like Norma and Virginia. I was self-righteous and felt contempt for their butch/femme life. They lived in the closet, I proudly didn’t. However, the way Norma and Virginia lived and documented their lives complicates my idea of the closet. Assimilation comes at a price. I live a mainstreamed life in a different world – my partner and I can marry if we choose. We have gained so much, yet I am learning some things were lost. As I came out in the early 70s this community was slipping away, changed forever by second wave Feminism and Stonewall. I won’t let it disappear forever. These lesbian lives and the history they lived are too important. 

Michelle Citron is an award-winning digital and film artist. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Walker Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Chicago, and the American Film Institute, as well as the New Directors, Berlin, London, Edinburgh, Oberhausen, and SeNef film and new media festivals. Her films and interactive narratives are distributed worldwide and are in the permanent collections of over two hundred universities and museums. She has received numerous awards and fellowships including two National Endowment for the Arts Filmmaking Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Humanities Media Grant, and three Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowships, for digital arts, filmmaking, and screenwriting.

She is the author of the awarding winning book Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions and the films Daughter Rite, Parthenogenesis, What You Take For Granted…, and Leftovers, and the  interactive narratives Cocktails & Appetizers, Mixed Greens, and As American As Apple Pie (collected at queerfeast.com).