In Memoriam: Barbara DeGenevieve

Barbara DeGenevieveWe were lucky enough to have met Barbara DeGenevieve just over 10 years ago. She sent Nan a note about a new project she was working on called ssspread.com, and she had some lesbian porn she wanted to show us.

Thus was born Full Load: Scenes from ssspread.com, which Barbara directed and for which Nan served as executive producer. Greta Christina wrote, “This is a tasty video…butch and FTM fans, load up.”

As relevant today as it was then, Full Load showed explicit lesbian and trans sex. Nan says, “Barbara was one of the first people to really explore lesbian, queer, FTM and trans sex in a porn context.”

She served as chair of the photography department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a visual artist, she received two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowships, among other awards and honors.

Out of her Chicago home base, Barbara also served as a mentor to the talented Carolyn Caizzi (Turn Me Up Over and On, Coming Home, Special Delivery) and Stacy Goldate (as Edith Edit, directing Dominatrix Waitrix), each of whom has her own porn style and eye for style.

We had the pleasure of meeting Barbara in person in Santa Fe a few years ago. What fun!

It was with great sadness we learned of her death earlier this week from cervical cancer.

We credit Barbara with bringing a “Chicago porn” style to lesbian and feminist porn. Her influence can be seen in her sense of humor, which is present in nearly everything she touched and created.

 

Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply