Friday, November 14, 2014

A Collection To Rival Casa Susanna

A few years back a rare photo collection of a Catskill resort called Casa Susanna was found and made into a play. The collection was of trans-women from the 1950s and now there is a photo collection of trans-women in Paris from the fifties. The whole collection can be seen here and a sample of photos is on the website Dangerous Minds
TRANSGENDER WOMEN OF PARIS IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES

These beautiful photographs of transgender women, in Paris from the late 1950s and early 1960s were taken by Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm, who traveled to Paris in the late-fifties, where he hoped to create a new kind of night-life street photography. Strömholm lived in the Red Light district, around Place Blanche and Pigalle, where he made friends with many of the young transgender women who worked the streets and hotels to make a living.

In 1983, Strömholm published many of these photographs in his book Les Amies de Place Blanche. In his introduction to the book he wrote:
“This is a book about the quest for self-identity, about the right to live, about the right to own and control one’s body.

...These are images of people whose lives I shared and whom I think I understood.

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