Queer Photo Archive of Women’s Intimate Vernacular Scenes, circa 1930s to 1947

Lesbian LGBT Photo Archive

Photograph

[LGBT] Lesbian photo archive documenting women’s intimate vernacular photography from the 1930s through the late 1940s, preserving sustained visual evidence of female same sex affection in everyday settings during a period when such relationships were seldom named openly and remained subject to social and legal constraint. A collection of personal photography, the group centers on repeated embraces, touch, lap-seating, cheek-to-cheek posing, and kissing between women, giving the material particular force within individual's personal memorialization of intimacy within the LGBTQ+ community.

Photo archive of 21 items, ranging from 2.5 x 3.5 to 3.5 x 5.5 inches, circa 1930s to 1947. The group includes 17 photographs and 4 real photo postcards. Visible scenes include two women seated together on a sofa with one on the other’s lap in a wallpapered interior; women embracing on lawns, porches, and roadside or yard settings; a pair posed cheek to cheek beside a balcony railing; two women riding together on a bicycle, dated “Oct. 1947”; and a standing embrace beneath trees with “1937” written at the lower edge. One image shows two pairs of cross dressed couples kissing before a brick building, the only photograph in the group to introduce cross-dressed presentation, with jacketed and hatted figures staged as paired couples; the front is inscribed, “Be happy while you can.” One real photo postcard sent to Miss Anna Shader, c. 1920, pairs postal circulation with an image of lesbian companionship on the picture side and carries the manuscript message, “Dear... Why don't you write to me I have written to you these four times. -Claudia,” with the address side postmarked Riverside, California and directed to rural Virginia. Several images show the similar scenes recurring across the archive, often with arms around one another, bodies turned inward, or faces pressed together. Fronts and versos also carry scattered dates and notations including “11/18/43,” “1937,” and “Oct. 1947.”

The archive survives from a period when lesbian life was more often preserved in private snapshots, personal correspondence, and informal keepsakes than in explicit public documentation. As such, these photos are evidence of how individuals personally documented intimate relations, desire, play, and companionship within ordinary domestic and outdoor settings, including one image that pushes further into gendered role performance through cross-dressed presentation. Light surface wear, corner and edge rubbing, scattered creasing, and moderate silvering or fading to some images; overall good condition. A compact but unusually concentrated visual record of female same sex intimacy in American vernacular photography at a time when queerness was highly stigmatized.

Item #23136

Price: $2,200.00