10 Images Depict a Queer History of Modeling

From the haute couture runways of Paris and New York and editorial photo shoots for glossy fashion magazines to reality television, models have been a ubiquitous staple of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American consumer culture. In Work!: A Queer History of Modeling from Duke University press, Elspeth H. Brown traces the history of modeling from the advent of photographic modeling in the early twentieth century to the rise of the supermodel in the 1980s. Brown outlines how the modeling industry sanitized and commercialized models' sex appeal in order to elicit and channel desire into buying goods. She shows how this new form of sexuality -- whether exhibited in the Ziegfeld Follies girls' performance of Anglo-Saxon femininity or in African American models' portrayal of black glamour in the 1960s -- became a central element in consumer capitalism and a practice that has always been shaped by queer sensibilities. By outlining the paradox that queerness lies at the center of capitalist heteronormativity and telling the largely unknown story of queer models and photographers, Brown offers an out of the ordinary history of twentieth-century American culture and capitalism.

George Platt Lynes with Paul Cadmus, on the set, c. 1941

Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Lily Yuen with fellow performers.

Lily Yuen with fellow performers, in Lily Yuen Collection, Schomburg, Folder 6: scrapbook 1926-1930.Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Gerald Kelly, in drag, photographed by Hoyningen-Huene, 1933.

Valentine Lawford, Horst (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 92-93.

John Ellested, c. 1943, George Platt Lynes.

Detail, Portrait of Brandford Models director Barbara Watson

Portrait of Brandford Models director Barbara Watson, taken from a promotional flyer, c. 1950. Barbara Watson Papers MG 421, Box 9, folder 4. Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Chester Nielsen and J. Ogle, George Platt Lynes, 1954

Ruth Ford, c. 1930s. Portrait by George Platt Lynes

Chester Nielsen and J. Ogle, George Platt Lynes, 1954

George Platt Lynes. Two Male Nudes (One in Shadow), n.d.

Gelatin silver print 10 x 7 7/8 inches (25.4 x 20 cm); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gift, Anonymous and In Kind Canada, 1998; 98.4827

Sarah Lou Harris, model for Remington Rand, Ebony Magazine 1952

Barbara Watson Papers, Schomburg, Box 9 folder 5. Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

10 Images Depict a Queer History of Modeling

Christopher Harrity