Apparently a promotional photo for a music-hall act. Black couple with one man dressed in formal wear and one dressed in a flouncy gown, necklace and extravagant feathered hat (but no wig). The image introduces further confusion through swapping of highly gendered accessories: The man dressed as a man holds the woman’s fan, and the man dressed as a woman holds the man’s top hat. An exceptionally rare postcard—the only example I have documented of the genre representing black performers. Publisher’s monogram on recto. Circular rubber-stamp impression in pink ink on verso: “CARTES POSTALES DOCUMENTAIRES / 19___ / Collection Louis HESSENBRUCH / No____”. The 19 is followed by the numerals 55 written in black ink."
Cite As:
Postcards of female and male impersonators and cross-dressing, #7778. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
This image is believed to be in the public domain in the United States by virtue of publication date, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections, http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2019 from materials held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Professor Durba Ghosh and Brenda Marston, Curator of the Human Sexuality Collection. For more information about this image, please contact the Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.
