Photograph from the Ruth Mountaingrove papers, 1950-1999 Four people wearing matching T-shirts lie on a woven rug, holding hands in a circle. The black-and-white photo conveys unity and friendship.
Photograph from the Ruth Mountaingrove papers, 1950-1999

Lesbian Intentional Community: Ruth Mountaingrove (b.1923) photographs

Ruth Mountaingrove (1923- ) is a photographer, writer and artist who moved to Oregon in 1971, settling in communes and eventually co-founding Rootworks, a lesbian land in Southern Oregon. Rootworks was home to the Ovular workshops, which Ruth and Tee Corinne, another prominent lesbian photographer, and others, led. The workshops, which ran for six years, were an opportunity for women to learn photography in the context of the Women’s Movement, providing a means for the women to examine the differences betweAll MWDL Collectionen the way men pictured women and the way the women saw themselves. The feminist photography magazine, The Blatant Image, sprang from the Ovular workshops. The Ruth Mountaingrove collection consists of correspondence, diaries, ephemera, and photographs.

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