Casa Susanna

In this set of amateur photographs, found at a New York flea market in 2004, are men dressed as women: made-up and coiffed, they pose, play Scrabble or garden – and clearly have a lot of fun. These photos belonged to a certain 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 Catskill estate: Casa Susanna.

These men, sometimes 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 moving, emancipating photographs form an essential chapter in the political history of sexual minorities in post-war America.