Bobby Kork photographs

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: 7652

Scope and content

The first group of 17 personal photos, one album and two loose prints, are a mix of full-length drag portraits taken at home and candid photos taken of Bobby and his friends in a gay lounge. The second group, one album containing 126 photos, is from his personal collection and features gay men from the World War II period. These are all roughly wallet-size photos, hand-colored. The photos include about an equal percentage of portrait and physique images of men ranging in age from teens to 30s or 40s. The third group contains 27 original black and white photographs, all of young gay men in casual home settings, mostly indoors or out on the lawn. The photos in each of the albums are of the same young men, some clothed and some semi-nude. Dating on a few of the photos indicates 1953 and 1954.

Dates

[1940-1954].

Creator

Kork, Bobby. (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Bobby Kork was a gay man and cross-dresser who performed as a hermaphrodite (which he probably was not) in the circuses of the 1940s and 1950s.

Biographical / Historical

These photographs document gay circus culture. They also document Kork's own life as a gay man and cross-dressing performer. Furthermore, they reveal a cohesive community of gay circus workers. Bobby took his camera into a hidden world and recorded the faces of gay men during a time when the medical community treated them as mentally disordered and law enforcement considered them criminals.