WOW Report: Shelf Life: Steel Magnolias

(photo from CASA SUSANNA: Edited by Michel Hurst and Robert Swope, published by powerHouse Books)
We just love random, banal, amateur photos of men in drag. And as luck would have it, collectors Michel Hurst and Robert Swope, browsing at a New York flea market, happened upon a trove of snapshots of anonymous cross-dressers and put them in a book. All of the snaps in CASA SUSANNA, out now from powerHouse Books, were taken during the '50s and '60s in a Victorian house in New Jersey. Casa Susanna was a weekend headquarters, a kind of haven for the ladies, somewhere they could have tea, entertain friends, model outfits, enjoy salon-like evenings, and pose for photos free from judgment and always dressed to the nines. It was truly a gay community.