Claire Elgin - Part III: bibliography and comments

Part I: beginnings
Part II: business woman
Part III: bibliography and comments

1953:

• “Fails to be New Christine”. The Times (San Mateo). Aug 15, 1953.
• “Sex Operation Fails; Wanted To Be Like Christine”. The Register (Santa Ana) Aug 16, 1953.
• “Sex Operation of Self Fails”. The San Francisco Examiner, Aug 19, 1953.

1954:

• Herb Caen “Medical Insidem”. The San Francisco Examiner, Jan 20, 1954.

1955:

• Frederick G Woden & James T Marsh. “Psychological Factors in Men Seeking Sex Transformation: A Preliminary Report”. Journal of the American Medical Association, 157, 15, April 9 1955: 1292-4, 1297-8.

1956:

• Karl M Bowman & Bernice Engle. “Medicolegal Aspects of Transvestism”. Read at the 112th annual meeting of The American Psychiatric Association, Chicago, Ill., April 30-May 4, 1956. Printed in American Journal of Psychiatry, 113, 1957: Case 4 p597.

1965:

• Ira B Pauly. Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism: A Review of 100 Cases. Archives of General Psychiatry, 13,2, 1965: Case 48.

1966:

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. photographs by request on medical stationary only.

1967:

• “Mt. View acid Tank springs leak”, The Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto), Mar 24, 1967.

1968

• Who's who of American Women and Women of Canada 1968 p354.

1969:

• Elinor Hayes. “Old Films. Organ Revived”. Oakland Tribune, July 6, 1969.
• Harry Benjamin. “Introduction” to Richard Green & John Money. Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.

1971:

• “Chemical fire in Mt. View”. The Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto), Oct 22, 1971.
• Herb Caen. “You know the Avenue Theatre”. Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Nov 18, 1971.

1974:

• Myron K Myers. “Koltron shaking specialized world of precision etching”. The Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto), Oct 8, 1974.

1976:

• “Claire Elgin – firm founder, scientist, teacher – died”. The Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto), Nov 22, 1976: 3.
• “Claire Elgin: A long, varied career”. The San Francisco Examiner, Dec 1, 1976: 46.

1977

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, Warner Books Edition 1977: p137 & last 4 photographs. Online. Online. A close rereading. (Claire’s photographs not in PFD)

1995/6:

• Connie Christine Wheeler & Leah Cahan Schaefer “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24:1 Feb 1995. Online. Revised as the Afterword to Randi Ettner. Confessions of a Gender Defender: A Psychologist's Reflections on Life Among the Transgendered. Chicago Spectrum Press, 1996.

1997

• Susan Stryker. “Don Lucas Interview”. The Gay and Lesbian Society of Northern California, June 12, 1997: 10-11. Online.
• Susan Stryker. “Aleshia Brevard Crenshaw Interview”. The Gay and Lesbian Society of Northern California, August 2, 1997: 67-8. Online.

2002:

• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press, 2002: 143, 145, 155, 165, 167.

2011:

• Donald Laub. “The Claire Elgin Story”. Many People, Many Passports, April 11, 2011. Online.

2017:

• Penney Lewis, ‘The lawfulness of gender reassignment surgery’, American Journal of Legal History, 57, 2017: n139, n152.

2019:

• Donald R Laub, MD. “The Cast of Characters (and Characters in Casts)” in Second Lives, Second Chances. ECW Press, 2019: Chp 12.

2020:

• Annette Timm. “ ‘I am so grateful to all you men of medicine’: Trans Circles of Knowledge and Intimacy” in Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories. University of Calgary, 2020: Chapter 3 p103-118.

FamilySearch(Claire LeVern Elgin)

Thank you to Jacob for the research.

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We have a collision of two different spheres of discourse. For Bowman and Benjamin, and Meyerowitz and Timm, the accounts of Claire are those of a patient, and thus patient confidentiality applies. For Laub, while Claire was initially a patient, she became a friend and colleague, a noted photographer and businesswomen and a philanthropist. He wrote of her as an admired citizen of the San Francisco area. He mentions in passing that she was trans, as he also mentions that she was raised Moslem – these are passing details, mentioned but not dwelled upon. She was also mentioned in San Francisco area newspapers as a businesswoman – especially in her obituaries. These latter did not mention that she was trans. Claire was first and foremost a photographer, a business woman, a musician. She was in the Who's who of American Women and Women of Canada. She was a successful trans woman whose history has been neglected. To reduce her to a medical patient, as do Meyerowitz and Timm is not at all satisfactory.

Meyerowitz worked with Stryker for the two interviews listed above, and thus knew that people in the trans community knew who Claire was. Timm wrote later than Laub, when his account of Claire’s story, with a passing mention that she was trans, was already in the public domain. Timm knew of the pseudonym used by Meyerowitz, and weirdly used a different pseudonym – and went so far to alter the title of Laub’s blog post to remove Claire’s name.

Benjamin’s account of Claire could have been quite different. Connie Christine Wheeler & Leah Cahan Schaefer’s “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”, written in 1995, but based on Benjamin’s file notes, give her the pseudonym ‘Janet’, and tell the story somewhat differently:

“Janet fought her transsexualism bravely and desperately all her young life: she ran away from home, joined the Navy, tattooed her entire body, jumped ship, attempted two unsuccessful marriages, became both an alcoholic and a morphine addict. After jumping ship in Mexico, Janet lived the happiest year of her life being courted by a young man until he accidentally discovered her ‘secret,’ forcing her to give up her ‘girlhood’ to return to the United States and to continue unhappily trying to live the male life. Eventually Janet began a correspondence with Benjamin, who replied sympathetically, ‘I understand the difficult situation you're in but I do believe a way can be found to help you lead a happier life than you are doing now.’

“Janet finally met Benjamin in person at age 48, after the last of many self-castration and mutilation attempts in order to get a surgeon to complete the operation she had desired for so long. With Benjamin's encouragement and the inspiration of Jorgensen's story, Janet took a more scientific and intelligent path toward fulfilling her dream. As with Inez, despite her generally masculine appearance and the late age at which she completed her surgery (in her late 50s), Janet's is a genuine success story. Freed from her lifelong gender struggle, her brilliant talent emerged. Janet and a business partner developed an invention sufficiently valuable to be sold eventually for millions of dollars.

“Except for her closest and most intimate friends, no one in Janet's life knew that this loved and wonderful woman was not a genetic female. Although she died at 72 of lung cancer, Janet lived her last 25 years in great wealth and contentment.”

The Warner Books paperback version of The Transsexual Phenomenon came out in May 1977, only months after Claire’s passing. It contains the photographs missing from the Julian Press Hardback, including five of Claire, including a full-frontal nude to show her tattoos, with her face clearly visible. One wonders if they would have done so were Claire still alive.

Claire was a self-made millionaire. She was not a nepo baby like Reed Erickson who inherited the majority of the family businesses, Schuylkill Products Co., Inc. and Schuylkill Lead Corp. Having made money Claire was then generous as a philanthropist – although she no longer donated time or money to trans activism, as she had done in the 1950s.

As the 1940 census records Clair and Ruth as having a 15-year-old son, the child would have been born circa 1925 when Clair was 20 years old. Neither the autobiography given to Benjamin, nor that given to Laub allow for marriage and fatherhood at this date. Bowman records Clair has having two marriages, but also claims that Clair was impotent, and implicitly not the biological father of the son.

There is no mention that either Benjamin or Laub prescribed estrogen.

It is generally assumed that ‘Claire’ is a female name, and ‘Clair’ a male name. However there are women called Clair and men called Claire. See Wikipedia. The gender ambiguity of the name is lost when it is replaced by a pseudonymous Caren or Carla.

Elgin is usually taken to be a Scottish name, Gaelic Eilginn, perhaps meaning ‘little Ireland’. There is an 18^th century Lord Elgin (of the Elgin Marbles), and there are many Elgin place names across Canada and the US. It is also Turkish for ‘stranger’.

There are mentions of a second pre-transition marriage to a woman, and a post-transition short-lived marriage to a man. However I could not document these.

Claire Elgin (1905 - 1976) – Part II: business woman

Part I: beginnings
Part II: business woman
Part III: bibliography and comments

In 1962 Claire encountered Yugoslavian immigrant Franz Kolterer who founded Micro Science Associates, a precision etching firm. Claire provided skill in micro-photography, and was manager of the art and photo department and a director of the company until 1967.

Claire in Benjamin's book, 1977

October 3rd, 1963 Claire was admitted to Stanford Hospital with an incarcerated hernia. Her doctor there was Donald Laub (1935-2024), then an intern but who later became known for transgender surgery. She told him that she herself had removed her penis. She also gave him an alternate autobiography:

“She explained it to me. She told me further that she was born in Arabia, the son of a Scottish trader who ran a ship between Arabia and England, and was educated aboard ship by specialized tutors. She was genetically XY, a male born with a grade 3 hypospadias, a birth defect in which the urine comes out just above the scrotum. The mistake was made that Clair was a female because the genitalia resembled a clitoris and labia in appearance. The diagnosis was plausible, since no genetic karyotype was available in Arabia in 1900. When puberty came along she developed an ample penis, which was upsetting to her, having been raised for 15 years as a female. For many years, she sought medical advice but there was no one who would help her. Unable to live as the woman she felt she was, she removed the penis and the rest of the male apparatus with a sharp knife and presented herself at the University of California emergency room. She was taken care of there by urologist Dr. Goodwin, who was sympathetic to her plight and fixed her up as well as possible at the time.” … “I asked her about her body art, and she told me she’d once traveled with a circus as a tattooed lady and sword swallower.”

The surgery to fix the hernia went well. However follow-up tests revealed adenocarcinoma of the kidney cells, and the left kidney had to be removed. Again the surgery went well.

Dr Laub got to know Claire as a person:

“Well, Clair had some idiosyncrasies, as you might have suspected by now. Having been raised Muslim, she had good habits; she abstained from drinking coffee or alcohol. Despite being female, Clair had retained some of her male spirit, owning a motorcycle, a gull-wing Mercedes, and a 300 Savage telescopic rifle. She had a fondness for Japanese architecture. Her profession was photography, which she had been taught on the ship during her schooling years, and during the birth of Silicon Valley she was able to make microphotography negatives of the plans for a computer chip; the manufacturing process utilized silver salts in the negatives of her microphotos to etch silicon into chips.

“Clair was rewarded for her efforts and gained a large number of shares in one of the more prominent laser and computer companies in the Silicon Valley. With her money she built a Japanese home, a five-sided pagoda on the top of one of the highest hills in a most exclusive suburb, Los Altos Hills. She included koi fish tanks where the fish were able to swim from outside the home into the inside for Clair’s pleasure. The five alcoves of the pagoda each had a wind-generated musical organ, insulated so that there was no sound of blowing air during the playing of the pipes.”

Harry Benjamin’s seminal book on Transsexuals came out in 1966. He condensed his three years of meetings and correspondence 1953-5 and described Claire in three paragraphs, but, as she requested, without giving a reference name. No photographs were included in the book, but medical and other professionals could request them if they wrote in on medical stationary. Black stripes were placed over Claire’s face to prevent recognition.

“One patient who is now, several years after the operation, a decidedly masculine-looking 'woman,' with tattoos all over her body, is getting along well in an active business and is unrecognized as a former male. She is merely considered eccentric by her associates.

“Under no circumstances, she assured me repeatedly, would she ever go back to living as a man. 'This way I am at least myself and can relax,' were her own words.

“A couple of times she was arrested under the suspicion of 'impersonating.' When she was taken to a police station, examined and declared to be a woman, the arresting officers apologized and in one instance, bought her a dinner. Not all patients in such situations fared equally well”.

In his introduction to the 1969 anthology, Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment edited by Richard Green and John Money, Benjamin wrote, probably with Claire in mind:

“These few instances of attempted self-castration by definitely non psychotic individuals impressed me greatly. Their desperation as well as the entire clinical history with their vain search for help, often from childhood on, made me realize that the medical profession truly treated these patients as ‘stepchildren’. Educational and medical lectures and scientific publications were urgently needed.”

In 1967 Micro Science had merged with Alloys Unlimited. That was the year that one of the company’s acid tanks sprang a leak in March, and a fire captain had to be rushed to hospital. There was a further incident in October 1971 when there was fire in a tank of nitric acid.

The firm was sold to the British Plessey Group and became Plessey Micro Science Inc in 1974, and then Kolterer set up Koltron Corp. By now Claire was no longer involved, but she had invested in shares of Micro Science Associates, Alloys Unlimited and then Plessey Micro Science Inc, and had become a millionairess.

However, by the end of the 1960s, with age, the many lines in her face made her look more male than female. Laub and his team did a face-lift, which went very well. By this time, Dr Laub had started doing transgender surgeries – his first trans patient (other than Claire) was Ella in 1968. In 1969 Donald Laub founded Interplast to provide necessary reconstructive surgery for persons in developing countries. Claire became the official Interplast photographer, and travelled to central and south America and chronicled surgeries for cleft lip, cleft palate, and burn scar deformities. She was greatly appreciated for the excellence of her photography and her compassion toward patients, even though she was not passing that well. The patients – affectionately – referred to her as “Señor Clair”.

Vernon Gregory, an organist who played the mighty Wurlitzer organ, took over the Avenue cinema in Oakland to install the Wurlitzer that his son had found in Chicago. They moved it to Oakland, installed it and started a program of films accompanied by the organ, but were deeper and deeper in debt until Claire – who played a smaller organ at home – came in to rescue the project in 1972. She also bought a plane that year and learned to fly.

Claire lost most of her money in the recession of the 1970s, and was for a while bankrupt. She developed a working 3-D television and patented it, but it was the alternate model by Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic) that was more successful.

Claire in later years

In 1976, Claire called Dr Laub complaining of severe pain in the rib when she coughed. After a preliminary examination, Claire was admitted to the Stanford Hospital oncology medical service. X-rays showed that her lung cancer had metastasized to the rib. Claire asked how long she had left and was told about six weeks. She asked for a glass of water, and took one of the cyanide pills that she had in her purse.

The next year Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon was reprinted as a Warner Books Paperback. This time the photographs were included within the book, and the black strips hiding Clair’s face were removed.

Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, 2002, included 5 short mentions of Claire disguised under the pseudonym of Caren Ecker. These mentions were based solely on documents in the Kinsey archives, mention her auto-castration and surgery in 1953, her contact with Louise Lawrence and with Worden and Marsh, but say nothing about Claire’s subsequent career as a business woman and photographer.

Both Claire’s only son, age 82, and her business partner, Frank Kolterer, age 76, died in 2007.

James Bidgood/Terri Howe (1933-2022) 1950s drag performer

James Bidgood was born and raised in Wisconsin. He moved to New York City in 1951.

He found work at the drag nightclub Club 82 when it opened in 1953 as a set and lighting designer, and then as one of the drag performers, performing under the name of Terri Howe. 

He also graduated from the Parsons School of Design, and then worked professionally as a window-dresser, costume designer and free-lance photographer. He desisted as a drag performer. 

Through the 1960s he became a photographer of male nudes, often working in his own small Hell’s Kitchen apartment. His masterpiece is taken to be the 1971 film Pink Narcissus, IMDB, with male actress Charles Ludlam, again mainly filmed in his apartment over a period of seven years, although he was not credited with the film until almost 30 years later in that he took his name off the film after the financers became exasperated by his perfectionism, and imposed their own edit and soundtrack. For many years it was incorrectly assumed that Andy Warhol was behind the film.

In 1999 Bruce Benderson, having researched Bidgood’s life and work, published a large coffee-table book of Bidgood’s photography, and put the record straight re Pink Narcissus. 

In 2005 Bidgood was honored with a Creative Capital grant, which financed his return to art photography. He was recognized in the last years of his life as pre-cursor of camp. and is now spoken of along with Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. 

He died of complications from COVID at age 88.

• Bruce Benderson. Bidgood, Tashen, 1999.
• Jesse Dorris. “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Camp”. Aperture, May 15, 2019. Online.
• David Noh. “James Bidgood’s Sexy Phantasmagorical World”. Gay City News, June 25, 2019. Online.
• William E Jones. “AGAINST NATURE: William E. Jones on the art of James Bidgood”. ArtForum, Summer, 2019. Online.
• Trudy Ring. “James Bidgood, Creator of Film Pink Narcissus, Has Died”. Advocate, February 01 2022. Online.
• Patrik Sandberg. “Elegy for a Packrat: Remembering James Bidgood: Patrik Sandberg on his years of friendship with the legendary filmmaker”. Frieze, 23 May 22. Online.
• Miss Rosen. “How James Bidgood Inspired a Generation of LGBTQ Artists”. Blind-Magazine, October 24, 2022. Online.

EN.Wikipedia    IMDB

The Cameron siblings: Bobbi and Loren

Marjorie (1922-1995)

One cannot mention the trans siblings, Loren and Bobbi, without also mentioning their remarkable aunt, Marjorie Cameron (sometimes just Cameron). She was in the US Navy during WWII as aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Afterwards she joined occult circles in Los Angeles, and became muse and later spouse to Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and thelemite magickian. In 1946 she, Parsons and L Ron Hubbard undertook the “Babalon Working” to create a magical child. They knew several science fiction writers. After Jack’s death in an explosion, she became known as an artist and acted in some films, most notably as the Scarlet Woman in Kenneth Anger’s Inaugeration of the Pleasure Dome (1954).

• Spencer Kansa. Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron. Mandrake, 2014.

• Michael William West. “Marjorie Cameron (1922-1995)” in Sex Magicians: The Lives and Spiritual Practices. Destiny Books, 2021.

• Alice Troughton (dir). “Jack Parsons: The Devil and the Divine” with Josh Bowman as Parsons and Alicia Witt as Cameron. S2.E6 of Lore, US Amazon 40 mins 2018.

IMDB

Bobbi (1953 - )

We have already discussed Marjorie’s niece, Bobbi, who was in the Cockettes and starred in Elevator Girls in Bondage, 1972 and The Holy Mountain, 1973 and Star Trek.

GVWW IMDB

Loren (1959- 2022)

Marjorie’s nephew and Bobbi’s brother, Loren became a photographer and trans activist. He is best known for his book Body Alchemy, 1996, which documents the process of trans male transition, including his own.

While cis photographers such as Christer Strömholm, Andy Warhol, Walter Rutter, Brassaï, Mariette Pathy Allen had been taking pictures of trans persons as far back as the 1930s, Loren was the first trans photographer to be so recognized.

His work was also exhibited in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.

He died by suicide at age 63 after a period of poor health.

• Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits. Cleis Press, 1996.

• Man Tool: The Nuts and Bolts of Female-to-Male Surgery. Zero eBooks, 2001.

• Cuerpos Fotografiados. 2 volumes. Taller Experimental Cuerpos Pintados, 2003.

• “Finding love as a transman”. Advocate, December 18 2006. Online.

• Loren Rex Cameron papers, 1961-2008. Cornell. Online.

Other:

• Dani Hefferman. “Transgender Photographer Loren Cameron Speaks At University Student Event”. GLAAD, September 27, 2012. Online.

• Penelope Green. “Loren Cameron, 63, Dies; His Camera Brought Transgender Men to Light”. New York Times, April 20, 2023. Online.

EN.Wikipedia IMDB

Éve-Claudine Lorétan (Coco) (1969 – 1998) model, housekeeper

​Lorétan was raised in Thun, south of Bern. She was taking black-market hormones from the age of 13. Her elder sister had been raped at age 13, and afterwards turned to drugs and died at a young age.

After high school, Lorétan trained as a model. At age 20 she took the name Éve-Claudine and Coco as a professional name. She met 32-year-old photographer Olivier Fatton in a sauna in Bern in November 1989, and they instantly fell in love.  She asked him to document her transition.

Her surgery was further video-documented by film-maker Paul Riniker. However there was an error, and more  surgery was required. The day her friends took her home from the hospital, she did cocaine to deal with the pain, and also insisted on performing that night. On stage she tore out her IV, howled and bled.

Riniker’s film Traum Frau Coco was shown on Swiss television in 1991 and watched by over 660,000 on the first broadcast. This made Coco famous in Switzerland, and sporadically she was in the news over the next few years, but she had to work as a housekeeper at a mental hospital in order make a living.

She also suffered from osteoporosis and depression. Doctors prescribed morphine, but that led to addiction.  She did model for the Bernese fashion designer Marianne Alvoni, and for a while was working at a sex salon in Thun, but was too well known.

In 1997 the manuscript of her autobiography was stolen. She made several suicide attempts, and so died at age 29.

In 2018, Coco’s life was made into a musical, Ein Transgendermusical by author Alexander Seibt and composer Markus Schönholzer. A male was cast for pre-transition and a female for her later years.

In 2019, Fatton published his photographs of Coco.

• Paul Riniker (dir) Traum Frau Coco. With Coco. Switzerland, 56 mins 1991.
• Miss Rosen. “Candid Photographs of 1980s Trans Trailblazer and Model, Coco”. AnOther Mag, March 01, 2019. Online.
• Miss Rosen. “The Majesty and Tragedy of a Trans Radical Gone Too Soon”. Feature Shoot, May 2, 2019. Online.
• Dunia Miralles & Olivier G Fatton. Coco. Edition Patrick Frey, 2019.
• Dunia Miralles. “Olivier et Coco: Art, amour, passion et tragédie”.  Des Avenues et des fleurs, 21 février 2019. Online.

DE.Wikipedia        transgender.at (translation)

Andrea Susan Malick (1939 – 2015) photographer, cinematographer.

Jack Malick, a photographer, was a regular participant from the age of 21 in Susanna and Marie Valenti’s Chevalier D’Eon Resort and later Casa Susanna. Malick’s femme name was at first Jacqueline, but when he and his first wife Bonnie, endowed that name on their daughter, Malick took the name Andrea Susan. Andrea, who had a developing room, became the official photographer for the resort - this was at a time when commercial film developers might react unfavourably.

David/Gail Wilde, one of the richer members, bought Andrea an expensive Roleiflex camera (which cost over $1,000) with the request that Andrea learn how to process color film. Gail also requested a copy of each photograph taken. Gail collected them in expensive albums.

When in 1964 Susanna wanted to make movies, Andrea stepped up with a professional 16mm camera. Two films were shot in the same weekend in Marie’s wig store in New York.

When David Wilde and Joan Bennett decided to move out of Manhattan, it was Jack, already living in Scarsdale, who introduced them to a local real-estate agent. As part of the move Joan insisted that David’s femme persona, including the photograph collection, be left behind. After a night of drinking, Gail’s photograph collection was put out on the garbage, and disappeared overnight.

Andrea 1993

Malick was the cinematographer on Leo Wollman and Doris Wishman’s groundbreaking Adam or Eve, 1971, which was later recut with additional material and rereleased as Born a Man ... Let Me Die a Woman, 1978, (although Malick is uncredited on the actual prints). He was lighting director or cinematographer on mainly television films through the 1980s and 1990s.

Andrea was a regular at Fantasia Fair in Provincetown. She hosted the Fashion Show many years from 1976.

In 1985, Jack was briefly in the news when his Scarsdale home was burgled and he shot the intruder, wounding him.

In 1991 Andrea was the director and cameraperson on the video Bridges to Beauty which apart from the two producers had a totally trans cast and crew. As the airlines would not insure the camera equipment, Andrea drove from New York to Los Angeles for the gig and then back.

Andrea was nominated Ms Fantasia Fair in 1994, and in the newsletter for that year was described: “Andrea passes very well and travels extensively as her girl self, and has been just about everywhere from Disney World to virtually every city (and supermarket ) in the world”.

In 2013 Andrea visited fellow Fantasia Fair director, Miqqi Alicia in Toronto and was shown the 2005 book Casa Susanna complied by Robert Swope and Michel Hurst containing photographs from the 1960s. Andrea recognized many of them as her own work. She announced herself as the photographer at Fantasia Fair, 2013.

Andrea at the premier of the play

The next April Dallas Denny met with Andrea, and with permission identified her online. Jack’s daughter Jacqueline contacted Harvey Fierstein who was producing the play Casa Valentina. Jack and Jaqueline were invited guests at a preview, and then Andrea and Jaqueline at the premier of the play, April 1, 2014. A presentation re Andrea’s work was prepared for Fantasia Fair, 2014. However a medical emergency forced Andrea into hospital instead. Dallas interviewed her on video in hospital.

Andrea/Jack died at age 75. The 2015 Fantasia Fair was dedicated to her.

• Doris Wishman (dir). Born A Man... Let Me Die A Woman. Hosted by Leo Wollman, camera by Andrea Susan Malick (uncredited) with trans persons Leslie, Lisa Carmelle, Deborah Harte, Ann Zordi, and porn stars Harry Reem, Angel Spirit and Vanessa del Rio. Scientific and medical advisor: Dr Leo Wollman. US 78 mins 1978.
• “Scarsdale Man Wounds Intruder”. New York Times, January 11, 1985. Online.
• Bridges to Beauty. Dir & camera: Andrea Susan Mitchell, with Vicki Vargas, Virginia Prince, Diahanna Taylor, Melissa Foster. US 1991.
• “JoAnne Roberts Service & Product Reviews: Bridges to Beauty Video”. En femme magazine, 24, June 1991: 8-9. Online.
• “Behind the Scenes: Making the “Bridges to Beauty” Videos. International Tran Script, 1,1, October 1991: 19-22. Online.
• Ladylike, 16, 1993: Cover, 40, 42. Online.
• Fantasia Fair Newsletter 96. Online.
• Michel Hurst & Robert Swope. Casa Susanna. PowerHouse Books, 2005.
• Kate Cummings. Katherine's Diary- the Story of a Transsexual. Beaujon Press, 2008: 131.
• Dallas Denny. “The Historical Roots of Casa Valentina”. Chrysalis, May 10, 2014. Online.
• Dallas Denny. “Identified! Casa Susanna Photographer Comes Forward”. Chrysalis, May 13, 2014. Online.
• Andrea Susan Malick & Dallas Denny. “In the Beginning: How My Photos of 1950s Crossdressers Inspired a Hit Show on Broadway”. Chrysalis, Nov 24, 2015. Online.
• Dallas Denny interviews Andrea Susan Malick. Video. Part I. Part II.
• Dedication. Fantasia Fair Participants’ Guide, 2015. Online.
• Isabelle Bonnet. Les Photographies des Travestis de La Casa Susanna. Mémoire de Master 1, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 2015 : 10-11, 48, 73.
• Katherine Cummings email to Zagria. 2 Nov 2017.

Obituary IMDB

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The Fantasia Fair Newsletter 96 says “She was one of 37 who attended the first unofficial gathering of CDs in Hunter, N.Y. in 1967”. However under the name Jack/Jacqueline she is mentioned in Katherine’s Diary as being at the Chevalier D’Eon Resort in 1962.

Bonnet p48 says that Jack Malick told her that he was a friend of Stanley Kubrick and worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. The credits for the film, which was made in the UK and Spain, mainly at Borehamwood and Shepperton studios, list a team of 11 for Special Photographic Effects, one of whom is ‘John Jack Malick’. IMDB treats this John Jack Malick as a separate person from Jack Malick. Jack’s full name was Jack John Malik (see the Obituary), so if they are the same person, the credits scrambled his name. This site on Jack’s son Gary, claims that Jack won the Best Visual Effects Oscar for 2001. However that Oscar, the only one won by the film, went to Stanley Kubrick.

There is no mention of Jack Malick in Brian Kellow’s The Bennetts: An Acting Family, which has sections on the marriage of David and Joan Bennett.

Jack in the video interview says that when the Wildes moved to Scarsdale, Gail’s photograph collection was put out on the garbage, and disappeared overnight. He assumes that these are what were found by Roberts Swope decades later. Katherine Cummings says that Gail left her books and publications with a friend. Katherine is ‘100%’ sure that the Robert Swope's find is Susanna’s collection, not Gail’s.

Stefánie Faludi (1927 – 2015) photographer

István Friedman was raised by prosperous Jewish parents in Budapest. However with the coming of anti-Semitic fascism in the 1930s, all was lost. 17-year-old István became a legend in his family when in 1944, wearing a stolen armband of the fascist Arrow Cross, and carrying an empty gun, he removed his parents from a holding building for Jews, and supplied them with with false papers which enabled them to live in an abandoned flat in Pest.

At the end of the war, István changed his surname to Faludi (Magyar for ‘of the village’), and was part of a youth film club, and he and two other members were able to get to Denmark, initially to replenish the Hungarian film stock.

After an idiosyncratic alteration to their passports, they were able to get on a ship to Rio de Janeiro. Through Hungarian expatriates and luck they were able to talk themselves into a team that did photography for the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, which involved journeys by canoe and plane across the Mato Grosso. They applied for visas to the US, but when they came through after three years in 1953, only István used it. His childhood sweetheart had also survived the war, and was living in New York. However on arrival he found that she was engaged to another.

Faludi, now calling himself Steven (English for István) lived in a cheap room in the Upper West Side, and found darkroom work for the photo departments of Manhattan advertising agencies. He met his wife Marilyn at a Jewish émigré cocktail party in 1957. They married six weeks later in a Reform synagogue. They acquired a house in Yorktown Heights, outside New York City, and had a son and a daughter. From the 1960s onward Faludi largely worked in the Condé Nast’s art production department doing difficult darkroom alterations for the photography that appeared in Vogue, Glamour, House & Garden, Vanity Fair, Brides. Susan Faludi (p7): “I’d always known my father to assert the male prerogative. He had seemed invested—insistently, inflexibly, and, in the last year of our family life, bloodily—in being the household despot. We ate what he wanted to eat, traveled where he wanted to go, wore what he wanted us to wear. Domestic decisions, large and small, had first to meet his approval.”

By 1976 the Faludis were separated. Later that year he broke into Marilyn’s house, and badly assaulted the man she had started seeing. He then claimed he had saved his family from an intruder, and got off with a small fine. He even claimed to be the wronged party at the divorce trial, and avoided alimony. After the 1977 divorce, Faludi moved into a Manhattan loft that was also his commercial photo studio.

In 1990, after the end of the Communist regime, Faludi visited his parents in Israel, the only time that he ever did so. He then moved to Budapest. He attempted to get the deeds of the buildings that the family used to own in Budapest, and then attempted to reclaim the buildings, but without success.

In 2004, at age 76, Faludi, now using the name Stefánie, had vaginoplasty and breast augmentation with Dr Sanguan Kunaporn in Phuket, Thailand. At this stage she had minimal experience of going out as a women – she had done this mainly in Vienna, rather than Budapest. As she did not have psychologists’ letters that approved her for surgery, Faludi wrote a letter as if from a Hungarian friend, and this was accepted by Dr Kunaporn. She also deducted 10 years from her age, in case she was rejected for being too old. Faludi flew out in men’s clothes and with women’s clothes for after surgery, and with several cameras, a tripod, a videocam, a computer and DVD player, and a suitcase full of films, music, and opera recordings. Faludi was able to persuade Kunaporn’s staff to film the operation.

Afterwards she spent time recovering in Melanie’s Cocoon in Phuket, a guesthouse run by Melanie Myers from Portland, Oregon, who had had the same operation from Dr Kunaporn as well as facial feminization from Douglas Ousterhout in San Francisco, which resulted in her losing her job as a commercial printing salesman. The guesthouse was aimed at trans women, and Mel passed her business card to Kunaporn’s patients. Stefánie was by far the oldest guest.

As Dr Kunaporn’s Post-Operative Medical Certificate specified 1937 as birth year, Stefánie used her professional skills to make an altered copy with the correct birth year so that she could change her Hungarian birth certificate.

Later in 2004, after a quarter century of non communication, Stefánie contacted her daughter Susan Faludi who had become a well-known author with her books Backlash, 1991, and Stiffed, 1999. Susan visited her father in Budapest several times, and wrote up her discovery of he father’s womanhood and of Hungary in the 2016 book In the Darkroom.

Stefánie died at the age of 88.

• Susan Faludi. In the Darkroom. Henry Holt and Company, 2016.
• Marcie Bianco, Raewyn Connell, Jay Prosser, Susan Stryker & Judit Takács. “Short Takes: Susan Faludi's In the Darkroom”. Signs Journal, 2016. Online.
• Laura Miller. “Susan and Stefánie”. The Slate Book Review, June 10, 2016. Online.
• Michelle Goldberg. “Susan Faludi’s ‘In the Darkroom’”. The New York Times, June 16, 2016. Online.
• Rachel Cooke. “In the Darkroom review – an elegant masterpiece”. The Guardian, 19 June 2016. Online.
• Kay Brown. “In the Dark Room”. On the Science of Changing Sex, June 23, 2016. Online.
• Louise Adler. “In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi: dealing with Stefanie, her father”. The Australian, September 3, 2016. Online.
• Stacia Friedman. “book review: susan faludi’s ‘in the darkroom’”. Women’s Voices for Change, October 24, 2016. Online.

-----------------------------

While there is some information about the trans scene and persons in Hungary, there is nothing about Hungary's best-known trans persons: the 19^th-century novelist Sándor Vay; the artist Anton Prinner who left for Paris in 1927; Charlotte Bach who left Hungary at about the same time as Faludi pere and became a theorist of gender. Nor is there any mention of Desiré Dubounet, an immigrant from the US who settled in Budapest.

A few years later Melanie reverted to being Mel so that he could marry his Thai girlfriend and get her into the US.

In 2003, as part of the preparation to join the European Union, Hungary passed the Equal Treatment Act. They were so eager that they added extra categories: in addition to race, religion and sex they included ‘family status’, ‘motherhood’, ‘fatherhood’, ‘circumstances of wealth and birth’, ‘social origin’, ‘state of health’, ‘language’, ‘part-time work status’, and ‘trade union representatives’. They also added ‘gender identity’, which made Hungary the first country in the world to do so. However the legislation was very far in front of public opinion, and while gender changes are legally recognized, public acceptance is low.  Susan Faludi does not mention any case of a Hungarian trans person being able to use the law.

Susan Faludi, as is to be expected, gives a potted history of trans surgery. Then very briefly, p151, she brings in Michael Bailey and takes his side. Transgender activists ‘hounded’ him and his supporters. Why they would do so is not explained. Susan has entered an ongoing controversy and given only one side.  She is, of course, on thin ice here. If she thinks that Bailey’s position is defensible or even cogent, then she must think that her father was an autogynephile, but she quite avoids saying so. Kay Brown of course makes this explicit, and reasonably complains that she leaves “the reader with the notion that perhaps ALL MTF transfolk are like her father” - but then it is probably true that most biographies of their nature present their protagonist as some kind of exemplar.

Stefánie Faludi was a photographer.   There are a lot of descriptions in the book of photographs, but the book itself contains no photographs at all except for one of the author on the back flap.

Twice in the book, Susan tells us why we say Hallo on the phone: “Hallo. As my father liked to note, the telephone salutation was the coinage of Thomas Edison’s assistant, Tivadar Puskás, the inventor of the phone exchange, who, as it happened, was Hungarian. ‘Hallom!’ Puskás had shouted when he first picked up the receiver in 1877, Magyar for ‘I hear you!’.” I was unable to confirm this.

Paola Revenioti Πάολα Ρεβενιώτη (1959–) poet, photographer, sex worker, activist.

Revenioti was born and raised in Piraeus, the port of Athens. His father was a factory worker, his mother a hairdresser. His father's family regarded his homosexuality as shameful and he joined the navy academy at 13 to escape. That is where he first had sex.

He was expelled three years later and moved to Exarchia, in downtown Athens and lived as female. She made a living as a sex worker.

"I've met all sorts of people, from murderers to saints. I have seen the secrets of the Greek man, I've seen as few saw."

In the 1980s Paola was involved in many protests against state repression and for gay and trans (parendytikon) rights. In 1985 she published a collection of poetry Σαλτάρισμα (Saltarisma). From 1986-92 she published Kraximo, a 'trans-anarchist fanzine' which ran articles about gay and trans rights and photographs of her tricks.

In 1990 Paola became the first trans candidate for the Οικολόγων Εναλλακτικών (Alternate Ecological Party), and was one of the founders of the Greek version of ACT UP. In 1992 she was a prime mover in Athens' first gay pride, which was done without there being any gay organizations to support it. In 2003 she was elected as the president of the SATTE= Σωματείου Αλληλεγγύης Τραβεστί Τρανσέξουαλ Ελλάδος (Solidarity Association of Greek Transsexuals and Transvestites).

In 2008 she was a co-author of Η ιστορία του λεσβιακού, γκέι, αμφί και τρανς κινήματος στην Ελλάδα: μια πρώτη αποτίμηση(The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans movement in Greece: a first assessment), and appeared in the short film, Κι αν είναι αλήθεια; (What if it is true?).

In October 2013 she had an exhibition of her photographs in London.

• Еγο Лэтяο. "An afternoon cup of coffee with Paola ". Ough, 21/05/2012. www.ough.gr/index.php?mod=articles&op=view&id=899&lang=en.
  
• "Πάολα: ένας θρύλος του αντεργκράουντ μιλά στη LiFO: Με αφορμή μια έκθεση με φωτογραφίες της που ξεκινά στις 17 Ιανουαρίου στην γκαλερί The Breeder ". LiFo, 8.1.2013. www.lifo.gr/mag/features/3572.
  
• Hannah Lack. "Paola Revenioti: The Greek transgender activist on blowing up sexual taboos in the name of art". Dazed Digital, 2013-05-07. www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/16110/1/paola-revenioti.
  
• Marina Fokidis. "Paola Revenioti". Frieze, 155, May 2013. www.frieze.com/issue/review/paola-revenioti.
  
• Jean Paul Zapata. "Trans artist sex worker shows off lovers in London photo exhibit: Trans artist and prostitute Paola Revenioti shares photos of her former lovers and clients from 19 October to 3 November at East London’s George and Dragon gay bar". Gay Star News, 18 October 2013. www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-artist-sex-worker-shows-lovers-london-photo-exhibit181013.
  

Trans*late Paola    EL.WIKIPEDIA   IMDB   Google+  YouTube

Louise Hannon (1962–) business development manager, photographer.

Hannon was raised in Dublin. In the five years up to 2006, Hannon, self-employed, had worked as a business development manager at First Direct Logistics Ltd, and broke up with wife and children.

In October Hannon disclosed to management that she was transsexual and would be leaving because she did not think that a transport firm "would be comfortable with it". However she was encouraged to stay, but was asked to wait a few months to accommodate a new staff member.

She changed her name by deed poll in March and arrived at the office, but was told to work from home and to maintain her male identity on the phones, and when meeting clients. She was also told not to use the women's toilet at work (despite the fact that the manager often did so if the men's was occupied). Later she was told that a new employee had been hired, and there was no desk for her at the office. In July Hannon was told that the company director was not happy with her work. She left feeling that she had been constructively dismissed.

She appealed to the Equality Tribunal as she was entitled to do under the Employment Equality Act 1998. The Tribunal awarded her €35,422.71, and commented: "requesting Ms Hannon to switch between a male/female identity whenever the respondent felt the need for it constituted direct discrimination on the gender and disability grounds".

Louise has been Co-Chair of Labour LGBT Elected to the Labour Equality Co-ordinating Council, sat on the steering group of the Equality and Rights Alliance, been Vice Chair of Transgengender Equality Network Ireland (TENI).

She currently works as a photographer in Dublin.

• Justine Quinn. "Transgender Employee Awarded €35,000 by Equality Tribunal for Discrimination at Work". EqualJus, 211-4-19. http://www.equal-jus.eu/node/306.
  
• Louise Hannon. "I know I’m a woman, and my gender should be recognised". The Journal, Feb 16 2012. www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-%E2%80%98i-know-i%E2%80%99m-a-woman-and-my-gender-should-be-recognised%E2%80%99-356321-Feb2012.
  
• Louise Hannon. "I was let down by those I trusted and had faith in". The Journal, 26 April 2011. www.thejournal.ie/readme/column-i-was-let-down-by-those-i-trusted-and-had-faith-in-126674-Apr2011.
  
• Louise Hannon, Orlaith O'Sullivan, Lydia Foy. Trans Voices in Ireland. TENI, 2012.
  
• Allison Bray. "Transsexual is awarded €35,000: Firm says sorry in landmark equality case". Independent.IE, 04 December 2012. www.independent.ie/irish-news/transsexual-is-awarded-35000-26724928.html.
  
• "Transsexual wins tribunal payout". Indpendent.IE, 30 November 2012. http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/transsexual-wins-tribunal-payout-26725394.html.
  
• Orlaith O'Sullivan (ed). Equality & Identity: Trans and Intersex Experience in Ireland. Essays by Louise Hannon, Broden Giambrone, Orlaith O'Sullivan. TENI, 2013.
  

http://louisehannonphotography.smugmug.com.

Jessica Diana Bussert (1965 - ) network specialist, photographer.

Joshua Bussert grew up in the US Mid-west. He married his girlfriend at 18 when she became pregnant. In 1985 he studied data processing at Vincennes University, Indiana. He was also seeing a counselor to overcome his desire to be a woman. He had three children with his first wife before they divorced.

Bussert converted to Catholicism, and then met Sharon, a born Catholic, who became his second wife in 1990, after being told of his cross-dressing. They raised the three children from his first marriage and adopted two sisters from Haiti. Bussert worked in business consulting and systems analysis for networks, went to the Kinsey Institute for counseling, and they found Gender Identity Dysphoria.
In 2001 Bussert started working for Hitachi Data Systems, and in 2003 started laser hair removal, and looked for a transsexual community, but being in the middle of Indiana found none. In addition a 19-year old transsexual was murdered locally with her body set on fire.

Bussert applied for a transfer to the UK branch of Hitachi. He was to be an IT techie and business manager at £88,000 a year. The supervisor was open-minded, but moved on soon after. In London Bussert met Russell Reid at a conference, became a patient of his and started taking female hormones, and going out as female more often. She socially transitioned 2005 with Facial Feminization Surgery and breast augmentation with Dr Douglas Ousterhout in San Francisco. Her new supervisor had responded to the mention of a sex change: “Don’t do that to me, Josh. I had to work in an office with someone who did that once and it was weird”.  By this time Russell Reid had been forced into retirement and Charing Cross Gender Clinic gave her a run-around.

Hitachi effectively demoted her and she was given a negative appraisal. She took sick leave for stress, returned and again went on sick leave. Hitachi stopped paying her salary and she resigned. Jessica sued for £500,000 in the UK and $3.6m in the US, but without success.

Since the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999 it is clear that not only is it illegal to discriminate against transsexuals, but that this covers employees intending to undergo gender reassignment. However the Employment Tribunal in Reading dismissed Bussert's claims ruling that she had left the company of her own free will. Furthermore it found no fault with the way that Hitachi had handled the situation, and even commended Hitachi managers for displaying good management practice and embracing diversity.

As Bussert was no longer employed, the Home Office ruled that her permit to live in the UK was no longer valid, and Jessica and Sharon returned to Indiana.

They have since become award-winning photographers.

• Calare Dyer. “Transsexual seeks £2.5m damages after demotion from senior IT job”. The Guardian. 27 May 2006. www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329490763-110592,00.html.
  
• Michael Millar. "Experts reassure employers that transsexual Jessica Bussert’s discrimination claim against Hitachi is unlikely to prompt flood of claims". Personnel Today, 6 Jun 206. www.personneltoday.com/hr/experts-reassure-employers-that-transsexual-jessica-busserts-discrimination-claim-against-hitachi-is-unlikely-to-prompt-flood-of-claims.
  
• Marie Woolf. "Transsexual rights activist ordered to leave the country". The Independent, 20 August 2006. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/transsexual-rights-activist-ordered-to-leave-the-country-412648.html.
  
• Sharon Bussert. “My Husband is now my Wife”. Red Magazine. October 2006. Online at: www.bussert.com/jessica/20061001red.html. NO LONGER AVAILABLE
  
• "Transsexual Loses $1M Discrimination Case". 365Gay, January 8, 2007. Online at: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TNUKdigest/conversations/topics/25091.
  
• "Employee loses biggest ever transgender discrimination claim". Workplace Law, 8 Jan 2007. www.workplacelaw.net/services/news/8122/employee-loses-biggest-ever-transgender-discrimination-claim#.
  

http://bussertimages.smugmug.com

Holly Ahlberg (1934–) photographer, artist.

Ahlberg was born in Riga. The family lived in German-occupied Poland 1939-45, and then in West Germany until 1952.

After emigration to the US Ahlberg served in the US Army, and lived in New York and Los Angeles, married and became an advertizing photographer.

In the early 1970s, Ahlberg became Holly, divorced, and was accepted at the Stanford University Gender Clinic. However she chose not to have the operation. In 1975 she informed her clients of her change, and lost only a few of them.

She retired in 1985 and has become an artist. In 2013, using Google Earth, she found a previously unknown archaeological site in the Atacama Desert, which has provisionally been named Nuevo Albergis.

• "Real, or Desert Mirage?" Popular Archeology, May 27, 2013. http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2013/article/real-or-desert-mirage.
  
• "The Atacama Complex". Ancient Wisdom. www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/chileatacama.htm.
  
• "Hollys images". Artist Rising. http://www.artistrising.com/shop/artist/52022/holly-ahlberg.htm.
  
• Holly Ahlberg. Email to Zagria, Aug 24, 2013.