Ellen Shumsky is a lesbian feminist activist, photographer, psychoanalytic teacher, psychotherapist, supervisor, and writer. In the late 1960s, Shumsky lived around Southern France in the Languedoc region. This was where she was studying photography, her main mentor was her brother-in-law, Harold Chapman. Overtime she became a documentarian, picturing people without warning or awareness. Shumsky returned from France one the Gay Liberation Front was being formed in the summer of 1969. After her quick return she dedicated herself to the GLF and Radical lesbian activism. Her photographs mainly showed up in underground publications and the GLF newspaper Come Out! This was the start of her journey to capturing critical political movements and the key events leading up to these movements, she became more self-aware of her herself and the well-being of others. She was a member of the

Lavender Menace The Lavender Menace or revolution was an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and their issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970. Me ...

in 1970. She was also one of the founding members of the

Radicalesbians This article addresses the history of lesbianism in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, the members of same-sex female couples discussed here are not known to be lesbian (rather than, for example, bisexual), but they are mentioned as part ...

, and one of the authors of the 1970 lesbian feminist manifesto "

The Woman-Identified Woman "The Woman-Identified Woman" was a ten-paragraph manifesto, written by the Radicalesbians in 1970. It was first distributed during the Lavender Menace protest at the Second Congress to Unite Women, on May 1, 1970, in New York City. It is now co ...

", which was written by the

. She is signed to that manifesto as Ellen Bedoz. ''Portrait of a Decade: 1968-1978'', a collection of her photographs edited by Flavia Rando, was published in 2009. She took many photographs of the feminist, gay liberation and lesbian movements. She is featured in the feminist history film '' She's Beautiful When She's Angry''.

References

External links

Ellen Shumsky's websiteEllen Shumsky papers
at the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History, Smith College Special Collections American lesbian artists American LGBT photographers American LGBT rights activists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Lavender Menace members Lesbian photographers {{LGBT-bio-stub