Cecilia Dougherty creates videotapes and digital films which focus on the themes of lesbianism and popular culture. While her early work places lesbians in a cultural territory separate from mainstream society, other projects portray the lesbian experience in terms of commonly held norms; in her own words, "the life of an ordinary lesbian and her working-class family." Her work, which is created primarily as video art, is actually not chiefly 'about' lesbianism, but is about the nature of individual experience within society, with strong psychological themes. She uses biography, essay, portraiture and autobiography to examine the nature of human experience. An early influence in Dougherty's life was the poetry of Robert Graves. She holds a PhD in Media Philosophy from the European Graduate School. Her video works are archived at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. She is based in New York.

Videography