Portrayals of a Female Impersonator: Visual Representations of Gender-Bending between Central Europe and the United States.

In 1926, the renowned Jewish photographer Madame d'Ora (born Dora Kallmus) took one of the rare pictures of an artist* who performed as a so-called Damenimitator (female impersonator). This rare visual set piece shows the "female impersonator" Barbette, as they pose on a stool sideways looking into the camera. They are wearing lipstick and a beaded dance dress, typical of vaudeville performers of the time. The photograph suggests an ambience that gender-bending performers like Barbette created during their performances to challenge conventional gender relations by staging sexuality. In this article, I examine how gendered identifications were played with and sexualities destabilized on vaudeville and music hall stages between 1900 and 1940. I investigate how gender bending became a modern form of artistic expression and explore the questions what visual representations of gender bending are preserved and which insights on the representation of identifications can be gained from these visual sources. I thus illustrate how artists questioned alleged dichotomies of categorizations, such as male and female, and queer them. My analysis is based on portrait photography, first-person visual documents, venue programs, and black-and-white films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]