“Casa Susanna” was the name of a house in Hunter, New York, a town that is a good hour-plus north of Poughkeepsie, which is itself a couple hour’s drive from NYC. The given name of “Susanna” was Tito Valenti, and he created a safe haven for heterosexual males who liked to dress as women, a setting where they could indulge something approximating their true selves, an act that would be scorned in the regular society in which the Don Drapers of the world operated.

Michel Hurst and Robert Swope discovered a trove of photographs from Casa Susanna at a flea market, an event that prompted them to do some research into these mysterious, charming pictures. It turned out that Susanna was a professional female impersonator—at least that was what the business card affixed to one of the photo albums suggested. A substantial group of cross-dressers enjoyed visiting on the weekends to play-act as housewives, tending to the tacky trappings and maybe playing some Scrabble.

I think these pictures are just great. You can see in the directness of the gaze a complete lack of self-consciousness that, maybe, can come only from the indulgence of a hard-won security. Everywhere in life these men had to put on masks and play roles they didn’t want to play—but not at Casa Susanna.

All of these pictures are © Michel Hurst and Robert Swope. You can purchase their picture book documenting the house from powerHouse Books—it’s called, appropriately enough, Casa Susanna, and it was first published in 2005 (the second edition came out earlier this month).
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
via Tombolare and Vintage Everyday