Artist Blog
Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.
1/8 Man in makeup wearing ring. Photograph from a photo booth, with highlights of color. United States, circa 1920. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery
2/8 Woman in tuxedo. Albumen print, England, circa 1890. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery
3/8 Guilda, [one of a triptych]. New York, United States, circa 1950. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery
4/8 French prisoners of war in the German camp Königsbrück. Written on verso ‘Kriegsgefangenen- Sendung’. Germany, circa 1915. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery
5/8 Five performers on a platform. Handwritten on verso 'Haris Fifi, Zerneck Joe, Gaby Zerkovitz, Stasik Ficzin Mehelyi Mimi’. Albumen print, Hungary, circa 1900. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz Collection and The Photographers’ Gallery
6/8 Mock wedding, United States, circa 1900. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz Collection and The Photographers’ Gallery
7/8 Man dressed as a woman, Mannheim, Germany, circa 1960. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery
8/8 English prisoners of war in the German camp, Frankfurt. Handwritten on verso 'Artists, Jude "& J. Lewis, second lieutenant, Welsh Regiment, 1st the King's own”. Albumen print, Hungary, circa 1915. © Sébastien Lifshitz Collection Courtesy of Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery
Under Cover: A Secret History of Cross-Dressers
Apr 09, 2018 - Davide Meneghello
Currently on show, at Photographer’s Gallery in London, Under Cover: a Secret History of Cross-Dressers, is a fantastic visual reference on the relation between historical photographic records and queerness.
The exhibition bring to the viewer the personal archive of the French director Sébastien Lifshitz, which has been collecting queer-related photographs for more than two decades, offering a powerful gathering of ephemeras on gender not-conformity, historically preceeding the homosexual liberation.
The images are spanning almost a century of cross-dressing through a complexity of different scenarios: from domestic environments to photographic studios, theatre’s stages and war camps; discarding, with a visual tribute, the normative vision of our past and its, culturally constructed, binary division of gender. The beauty of the exhibition consist in the attempt of giving a visual past to the LGBTQI+ community, which can look back and see in this collection a multi-faced platform of queer possibilities.
Through images of Drag Queens and Drag Kings, Transexuals and cross-dressers, the performative elements of this exhibition reminds us how gender norms are culturally produced and how such norms are socially negotiated and regulated, offering an alternative historical narrative, deeply political, focused on its margins. As Sébastien Lifshitz has written on the preface of Mauvais Genre, catalogue which include the same archive on show in Under Cover: “Mauvais Genre in its way is a political book. It takes the side of the rebels and the marginal. It transmits the spirit at time playful and revolutionary blowing from these images. He puts forward those whose intimate struggle has become everyone’s business. it reminds us that identity is not one.”
Under Cover: A Secret History of Cross-Dressers is currently showing at Photographer’s Gallery, London, between 23 February – 3 June 2018. Courtesy Sébastien Lifshitz and The Photographers’ Gallery