Donna Gottschalk is an American photographer who was active in the 1970s and came out as lesbian around the time thatRadicalesbians andthe Furies Collective formed.^[1]

Gottschalk grew up poor on the working-class Lower East Side, living in low-income tenement housing, one of four children (Mary, Myla, and Vinnie). Her single mother was of Irish and Italian descent and operated a beauty parlour since the 1950s. Her father was a merchant marine who suffered from untreated mental illness and alcoholism and was not allowed in the home due to frequent physical abuse.^[2][3][4] In the 1960s, she studied illustration at theHigh School of Art and Design. Through school, she met other lesbians who took her to iconic lesbian bars. She also became involved in theGay Liberation Front. Gottschalk designed the "Lavender Menace" t-shirt worn by lesbian-feminist activists protesting theNational Organization for Women'shomophobia.^[5] Her sister Myla (born Alfie) first came out as agay man and then as atrans woman; Gottschalk documented Myla's transition beginning in 1992 through a photographic series. Due to being HIV+, struggling with narcotics and alcohol addictions, and suffering from violenttransphobic attacks, Myla died in 2013.^[6]

She moved to California to joinlesbian separatist communities. While in California, she worked as an artist's model, a topless bartender, and the driver of horse-drawn carriages.^[7]

Gottschalk lives on a small farm inVictory, Vermont.^[8]

Gottschalk was not a photojournalist or a documentary photographer but has been taking photos since she was 17. Her work is shown for the first time in the exhibitionBRAVE, BEAUTIFUL OUTLAWS: The Photographs of Donna Gottschalk curated by Deborah Bright at theLeslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art from August 29, 2018.^[7][9] Some of Gottschalks photographs have been published in theGay Liberation Front newspaperCome Out!. Her photos were in storage for 40 years. The subjects of Gottschalk's photos are her friends, family and roommates.^[2]

PhotojournalistDiana Davies took a photo of Gottschalk at the 1970Christopher Street Liberation Day parade that shows her holding a sign reading: "I am your worst fear I am your best fantasy".^[10][11]

In 2023,^[12] having already presented five Gottschalk photographs in the group showDe l'Amitié,^[13] the Parisian art gallery Marcelle Alix hosted her first ever European solo exhibition, co-curated by the writerHélène Giannecchini:Donna Gottschalk : Ce qui fait une vie.^[14][15] – the title referring toJudith Butler's French version of their bookFrames of War. The exhibition featured over 30 photographs selected by Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini: vintage prints, contemporary prints from theBrave Beautiful Outlaws exhibition and digital prints made by Gottschalk herself, on a domestic inkjet printer.

• Living people
• 20th-century American photographers
• 20th-century American designers
• American people of Irish descent
• American people of Italian descent
• Photographers from New York City
• American lesbian artists
• Lesbian feminists
• Lesbian separatists
• Radical feminists
• 20th-century American women photographers
• People from Essex County, Vermont
• People from the Lower East Side
• 21st-century American LGBTQ people
• 21st-century American women artists
• Lesbian photographers

• CS1 French-language sources (fr)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• Pages using infobox person with deprecated parameters
• Year of birth missing (living people)