Apr 17, 2014 - Sale 2345

Sale 2345 - Lot 127

Price Realized: $ 3,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(GAY NEW YORK)
Mini-archive of photographs and ephemera relating to transvestism and gay rights in New York City in the early

1970s. The visual and printed materials pertain to the very public lives of Lee Brewster ("the style guru for the world's cross-dressers") and Avery Willard (a.k.a. Bruce King, a photographer, filmmaker, publisher, performer, and gay activist). With 17 remarkable photographs and 2 contact sheets of Willard in drag that were apparently taken by him. Silver prints, each 7 1/4 inches (18.4 cm.) square. 1970s

Additional Details

with--With 18 photographs of contestants at Wigstock (1973), more than 60 photographs of the NYC Gay Pride parade (in 1974) and 18 photographs of the Queens Liberation Front parade (1973); each measuring 3x4 1/2 inches (7.6x11.4 cm.), b&w negatives, and 3 contact sheets depicting a gay pride parade. With assorted ephemera, including "Lee G. Brewster's Mardi Gras Ball" (illustrated), and vol. 1 no. 1 of "From the Queens Liberation Front" (an organization serving the cross-dressing community), and a printed pamphlet published by Playboy magazine about "Homosexuality" (published in 1971). 1971-1974.

Avery Willard (1921-1999) was a commercial photographer known for his theatrical portraits of Broadway's leading stars. In the 1970s, he began photographing the "gay scene," and published a newspaper of the same name. The pictures in this group are self-portraits in which he is dressed in historic and contemporary costumes.

Lee G. Brewster's (1943-2000) Greenwich Village boutique was legendary in the transvestite world. He staged elaborate balls for cross-dressers, both gay and straight and, according to the NY Times, "financed a successful legal challenge to overturn a NYC ordinance that allowed people to be removed from pubilc places for being gay."