‘Legends of Drag: Queens of a Certain Age’ Features Drag Elders

The strategy arrived to Harry James Hanson and Devin Antheus while both equally were being attending “church” — their phrase to explain a drag show.

This distinct overall performance took place in December 2017, on the night of the wintertime solstice, at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, a beloved queer dive bar in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. The two, the two now 32, had been struck that evening by the performers’ ages, which they guessed averaged about 60.

Wisconsin natives and pals considering the fact that they fulfilled on Myspace when the two had been 14, Mr. Antheus and Mx. Hanson, who works by using a gender-neutral courtesy title and pronouns, “had a lack of queer elders developing up,” Mx. Hanson explained.

Watching the queens perform at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge planted a seed in the minds of Mx. Hanson, a photographer, resourceful director and drag artist in Brooklyn, and Mr. Antheus, a floral designer and writer in San Francisco: to characteristic drag elders in a publication that, as Mx. Hanson put it, “we wished we had as young people.”

In March 2018, they photographed and interviewed 4 performers from the San Francisco scene — Phatima Impolite, then 51 Carla Homosexual, then 54 Renita Valdez, then 59 and Mutha Chucka, then 56 — and later on pitched the job to Sasha Velour, the drag artist and winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Year 9, who at the time was placing alongside one another the fourth situation of Velour: The Drag Journal. But the problem never ever created it to print.

Just after a yr of sitting on the material, Mx. Hanson pitched it to a close friend at Vogue, which published the photos with an essay on its website in April 2019. Before long just after, The San Francisco Chronicle ran an write-up on Phatima Rude, citing the Vogue piece. “Once it ran on the Vogue web page, we understood there was a hunger for it,” Mr. Antheus said, and the two made the decision to extend the task into a guide.

Equally say they were being compelled by an urgency to capture the tales of an older technology in advance of it was also late, as well as a wish to present a corrective to the considerably young and digicam-ready edition of drag that has entered common society through tv reveals this sort of as “Drag Race,” which just lately concluded its 14th time.

“Some queens truly feel slighted by the slender class of drag introduced on Television,” Mx. Hanson explained. The truth that “there are enough queens in The usa to even populate that a lot of seasons of ‘Drag Race,’” Mx. Hanson extra, “is since of the a long time of regional drag communities ushering in new generations of queens.”

In June 2019, the duo embarked on a cross-region sojourn of 16 towns, photographing and interviewing 77 far more drag artists, the oldest of whom was 90 at the time. “We desired to speak to the punks and the pageant women and the art queens,” Mx. Hanson mentioned, “to seize that stunning range inside so numerous different communities.”

Individuals performers, alongside with the four whose portraits very first appeared on Vogue.com, fill the web pages of “Legends of Drag: Queens of a Particular Age,” out June 21 from Cernunnos, an imprint of Abrams Publications. Not only a catalog of 81 drag queens, it also has stories of activism and protest. Several of its topics were being at the front strains of the homosexual liberation motion, in the ’60s, and the AIDS epidemic, in the ’80s.

The book’s gumdrop-bright portraits by Mx. Hanson were all shot outside in whole daylight to differentiate them from standard drag photography, which is usually shot at bars or in studios. “For several of them, drag is not a daytime activity,” Mr. Antheus stated. “It was overwhelming, but they came all over.”

Just about every performer, all of whom acquired a product payment for their time on set, was photographed with bouquets picked out by Mr. Antheus. Some are shown with types personally considerable to them, although others’ bouquets ended up picked out primarily based on the outfits they wore, or the place of their picture shoot. The notion was not just a visible element for the photographs.

“We required to give the women their bouquets,” Mr. Antheus said, making use of the expression that signifies appreciating cherished ones while they are nonetheless alive.

That sentiment proved prophetic. By the time of the final sitting for the ebook, in September, 4 of its subjects had died: Phatima Rude, at 55 Lady Purple Couture, at 43 the Goddess Bunny, at 61 and Tina Devore, at 67. “Losing queens through the procedure,” Mr. Antheus mentioned, “really solidified the value that these are stories we need to have to get out.”

Mx. Hanson recalled Kelly Ray, 59, a drag queen from Durham, N.C., declaring that taking part in the task may well be the last critical thing the performer does. “That strike me appropriate in the coronary heart,” Mx. Hanson mentioned.

However its creators observed the e-book as an antidote to televised interpretations of drag, some contestants from the “Drag Race” franchise found their way into its webpages. Sasha Velour, 34, wrote the foreword. Chad Michaels, the winner of “Drag Race All Stars” Time 1, is described in an interview with Dolly Levi, 64, from Los Angeles. Shawnna Brooks, 54, from Atlanta, is photographed in the back lawn of Nicole Paige Brooks, from “Drag Race” Year 2. In accordance to Mr. Antheus, those connections reveal that today’s drag queens are portion of a legacy that goes back again many years.

He and Mx. Hanson see “Legends of Drag” as aspect of an evolving undertaking. There are a lot more drag artists to pay a visit to, far more tales to convey to. “There is a queen in Barcelona who is 95 that I really want to fulfill,” Mx. Hanson claimed. “I have a Google spreadsheet of 75 queens that I want to do the job with,” unfold across the entire world “from Tulsa to Honolulu to Argentina.”

The very last performer highlighted in the ebook is Simone, a transgender female who does not use the expression “drag queen” and declined to offer an age. (“We are not heading there.”) Since the early ’90s, Simone has been regarded for accomplishing throughout New York Metropolis, like outside in close proximity to the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, the website of a 1969 uprising that proved to be a flash stage in the modern day L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement.

Simone, Mx. Hanson said, “is pretty specifically continuing in the tradition” of Marsha P. Johnson, the activist and drag performer who died in 1992 and is regarded as an early winner of transgender legal rights. “I really don’t believe there are lots of people who in fact do warrant a comparison to” Johnson, Mx. Hanson explained.

As for being named a legend? “It’s these kinds of a compliment,” Simone mentioned. “Any female would be impressed and psyched about seeing her deal with in a e book with this kind of amazing divas.”