Artist Spotlight: Christer Strömholm
BY Christopher Harrity
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/artist-spotlight/2012/05/29/artist-spotlight-christer-str%C3%B6mholm#slide-1 (http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/artist-spotlight/2012/05/29/artist-spotlight-christer-str%C3%B6mholm#slide-1)
Raising issues about identity, sexuality, and gender, "Christer Strömholm: Les Amies de Place Blanche," on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, New York City) through September 2, presents 40 photographs, historical publications, and ephemera documenting young transgender people in the heart of Paris's red-light district in the 1960s.
Arriving in Paris in the late 1950s, Christer Strömholm (Stockholm, 1918–2002) settled in Place Blanche, home of the famous Moulin Rouge. There, he befriended and photographed young transsexuals — "ladies of the night" — struggling to live as women and to raise money for sex-change operations. In President Charles de Gaulle's ultraconservative France, transvestites (as they were usually called then) were outlaws, regularly abused and arrested by the police for being "men dressed as women outside the period of carnival." Some of these women had tragic fates. Others, like "Nana" and "Jacky," eventually fulfilled their destiny and led happy lives as women. Living alongside them for 10 years, Strömholm photographed his subjects in their hotel rooms, in bars, and in the streets of Paris.