Opening Reception For New Photography Exhibit: We’ll Just Rock For Ourselves

Her photographs of Austin-based bands Girls in the Nose, Power Snatch, Sincola, Two Nice Girls, Swine King, and South by Southwest events

The Austin History Center invites you to the opening of its newest exhibit We’ll Just Rock for Ourselves: Selections from the Lisa Davis Photograph Archive on Tuesday, April 24 at 6:30 PM in the David Earl Holt Photo Gallery at 810 Guadalupe St. Light refreshments will be served.

The photographs were taken by Davis in the early 1990s and document the lesbian and queer music community of Austin, Texas. The exhibit runs April 24, 2018 – July 22, 2018.

The opening reception will feature live music by Gretchen Phillips, who has played in a number of “lezzie rock” bands including Meat Joy, Girls in the Nose, Two Nice Girls, and The Gretchen Phillips Experience.

She was inducted into the Austin Chronicle Music Poll’s Hall of Fame in 2001.

This exhibit and opening reception are free and open to the public. For more information call 512-974-7480 or visit austinhistorycenter.org.
 
About the Exhibit
The exhibition focuses on Davis’s documentation of the lesbian music community in Austin during the early 1990s.

Davis was friends with many local musicians, and her documentation of this scene merged her professional and personal life.

Her photographs of Austin-based bands Girls in the Nose, Power Snatch, Sincola, Two Nice Girls, Swine King, and South by Southwest events featuring members of the queer music community capture the height of this era.

Chances, a popular lesbian bar that was located on 9th and Red River, was the hub of Davis’s group of friends and functioned not only as a venue for live music, but as a community center for political activism.

In 1993, Davis drove with a busload of Austin women, many of them musicians or involved in the music industry, to the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, where they took part in demonstrations with the Lesbian Avengers.

Through a curated selection of photographs from the Lisa Davis Photograph Archive, the Austin History Center wishes to highlight the story of Austin’s lesbian music community as lived by Lisa Davis.
 
About the Collection
Lisa Davis earned a degree in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986 and remained in Austin working as a staff photographer for the Associated Press.

She also freelanced for numerous publications including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Austin Chronicle, The Texas Triangle, OUT Magazine, and The Advocate.

The Lisa Davis Photograph Archive (AR.2010.022) contains over 29,000 photographic materials that document the politics, sports, music, people, traffic, weather, parades, protests, and LGBTQ-related issues of Austin and Central Texas from the late 1970s through early 1990s.
 
Davis was involved in the local chapters of the Women’s Action Coalition and the Lesbian Avengers, and took part in and documented several protests for LGBTQ and women’s equal rights. She was an energetic presence in the Austin music scene, documenting many musicians, bands, and venues. After battling major depression, Davis took her own life on July 14, 1995, at the age of 32.

A memorial service was held for her in Austin at Umlauf Sculpture Gardens, and friends and members of the community gave donations in her memory to Out Youth, an organization which supports Austin’s LGBTQ youth.

The Austin History Center acquired her collection in 2010. This is the first time the photographs have been exhibited.

As the local history collection of the Austin Public Library, the Austin History Center provides the public with information about the history, current events and activities of Austin and Travis County.

The Center collects and preserves information about local governments, businesses, residents, institutions and neighborhoods so that generations to come will have access to their history.

The Austin Public Library provides knowledge, technology and inspiration to the Austin community. The Library is a hub of books and education, a meeting place of minds and an incubator of ideas.