Amos Badertscher: images and stories

Abstract

"Across several decades, self-taught photographer Amos Badertscher (1936-2023) made thousands of photographs of a liminal queer world: young male sex workers (who mostly identified as straight), drag performers and trans pioneers, and Baltimore's inclusive, ribald nightlife. Taken between the 1960s and mid-2000s, these photographs constitute an unparalleled chronicle of a culture of the era particular to Badertscher's hometown of Baltimore, but universally identifiable, one which began to fade with the movement of LGBTQ+ rights and liberation." -- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Preface / Beth Saunders -- Introduction / Hunter O'Hanian -- Lost boys, and all the rest of us / Rafael Alvarez -- Prologue -- Amost Badertscher wasn't gay / Jonathan D. Katz -- Images and stories : part one, visage -- A mecca for young hustlers and daddies : documenting Baltimore's meat racks / Joseph Plaster -- Images and stories : part two, nightlife -- Photography agaist the "normalization of fagdom" : Amos Badertscher in context / Theo Gordon -- Images and stories : part three, mirros -- Baltimore's "outsider within" : race and queerness in the photography of Amos Badertscher / James Smalls -- Epilogue.