Casa Susanna

This collection of amateur photographs, found at a New York flea market in 2004, features men dressed as women: with their make-up and hair done up, they pose, play Scrabble or garden – and they’re clearly having a great time. These photos belonged to a Susanna who, between 1959 and 1968, opened her door to all those who, like her, secretly cross-dressed. For a few days, they could come and live freely as women on her property in the Catskills: Casa Susanna. These men, some of them married, fathers of families, belong to the white upper middle class. Engineers, writers, accountants or airline pilots, they embodied the American dream and… its hidden face. From 1960 onwards, the publication of a clandestine magazine, Transvestia, enabled them to meet, correspond and overcome their loneliness and suffering. These deeply moving and emancipating photographs form an essential chapter in the political history of sexual minorities in post-war America.