Pits

1970 · ref. 23945 — 1970. 1970s drag gala and showgirl photo archive depicting costumed performers gender transformation erotic display and nightlife during a decade when gay liberation and the broader sexual revolution challenged established boundaries governing sexuality dress and gender presentation. Several photographs carry December 1973 processing dates placing part of the archive only four years after Stonewall and three years after the first Christopher Street Liberation Day marches brought a new gay liberation politics into American public life. The photographs concentrate on the social life within through parties galas clubs and other gathering spaces in which men and women could adopt extravagant personae expose or transform their bodies and participate in forms of gender presentation that remained subject to discrimination and in some jurisdictions police scrutiny outside such settings. Drag organizations themselves were contesting those restrictions during these years; the Queens Liberation Front campaigned against cross dressing laws and began publishing Drag in 1971 as a forum for drag and gender nonconforming communities. Photo archive of 23 chromogenic color photographs ranging from approximately 3.5 x 4 to 4 x 6 inches circa 1970s with several prints dated December 1973. The photographs show showgirls and drag performers in feathered headdresses rhinestone and pearl covered costumes gowns masks lingerie boas wigs theatrical makeup and revealing stage clothes. A blonde showgirl repeatedly poses in an elaborate white jeweled costume with a towering feathered headdress and fan both alone and beside a woman in a floral dress. Other photographs show performers in enormous white wigs and feathered costumes a figure enveloped in a tiered ruffled gown masked men in minimal costumes and participants mingling in crowded interiors. Several scenes are particularly physical: a nearly nude masked man dances in briefs and boots beneath a feathered headdress; another performer wears a bikini style costume with white fur; dancers in abbreviated stage costumes pose and move beneath colored lights. Six square prints record individual performers onstage in feathered and ruffled costumes preserving the performance itself rather than only posed portraits before or after it. Men and women appear as performers companions and spectators and the photographs repeatedly move between staged glamour and informal social interaction. One outdoor image depicts costumed participants near a banner extending the material beyond the interiors represented elsewhere in the group. The archive belongs to the decade in which post Stonewall liberation politics and older drag traditions increasingly overlapped with a broader culture of sexual experimentation. The first Pride march in 1970 emerged directly from resistance to police harassment and anti homosexual laws while drag queens and gender nonconforming participants occupied a contested position even within gay liberation. Contemporary drag culture was simultaneously developing its own institutions and media. Drag magazine recorded performers clubs legal struggles and community life beginning in 1971 while Female Mimics in 1974 reported on performance venues and offered readers information about makeup clothing and drag presentation. The private and semi private interiors represented here show another dimension of that history: spaces in which elaborate femininity male erotic display masquerade nudity and transformations of conventional gender presentation could function as entertainment and as social practice among participants and spectators. Light surface and handling wear occasional scratches and minor fading or color shift; several prints show period processing marks. Overall in very good condition. A concentrated visual record of drag pageantry showgirl spectacle sexual display and the social spaces in which men and women experimented with gender and self presentation during the sexual liberation era. unknown