Sheree Rose

American BDSM performer, feminist and photographer (b. 1941, Los Angeles, California). Sheree Rose is best known as a former creative partner of Bob Flanagan (1952—1996). She also documented many prominent LA underground musicians, artists, performers, and BDSM practitioners. Since 2011, Sheree Rose has collaborated with a British artist Martin O'Brien (b. August 1987), who, like Flanagan, also suffers from cystic fibrosis. In 2014, Rose donated Bob Flanagan's archive to USC's ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. Before her artistic career, Sheree Rose was married with two children and worked as a high school teacher; she had a Master's degree in psychology from California State University, Northridge. Following her divorce in 1978, Rose became increasingly involved in political activism and socialist feminism. She joined Los Angeles underground punk scene, briefly dating Billy Zoom, a founder of seminal punk band X. Rose photographed numerous iconic artists and musicians, including Genesis P-Orridge, Exene Cervenka, Ron Athey of Premature Ejaculation, Dennis Cooper, Ed Smith (2), Amy Gerstler and David Trinidad. In 1980, Sheree Rose met Bob Flanagan at a Halloween party; they immediately became BDSM partners and collaborators. Rose was Flanagan's producer, "muse," and extensively documented his work; they were married from 1989 until Bob died in 1996. They produced several critically-acclaimed projects together, exhibited at Beyond Baroque, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CalArts, New Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York and covered by the nation's most prestigious press, from Los Angeles Times and Village Voice to RE/Search Publications. In January 1997, American filmmaker Kirby Dick premiered his feature-length documentary, Sick: The Life And Death Of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, at Sundance Film Festival, centered around Flanagan's final years and his death in the hospital. According to Rose's interview in 2011, she was unjustly miscredited and involved in a lengthy legal dispute with Dick over 33% of the film's profits.