Les Amies de Place Blanche
‘… as it happens, I was a child in Paris during the time these pictures were taken…’
As I was looking for an image to illustrate my ‘How do I know if I’m trans?’ article, I came across a book of photographs taken by Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm (1918–2002) in the Place Blanche neighbourhood of Paris, from 1959 through 1967. What makes these photographs special, to me, is their remarkable sensitivity to their subjects, and that their subjects are, like me, trans women.
Looking at these images, I found myself deeply moved and almost obsessed. I went through them over and over and over again. I was especially taken by the many photographs of a woman named Nana, one of which I chose to illustrate my piece.
It took me a while to sort out my feelings — a complex mix of longing, sadness and awe — almost rapture — that these images evoke in me. Let me explain…
Firstly, as it happens, I was a child in Paris during the time these pictures were taken. I remember being in la Place Blanche with my mother. We may have brushed past these women; they may have paused to engage us. I was an attractive girl in my mid-single-digit years, with a rosy complexion and long strawberry blonde hair; and women tended to coo over me, complementing my mother on her lovely daughter. Praise which, unusual woman that she was, my mother let pass with a smile.
My mother knew that her ‘son’ was different, and had known since I was four years old, when I’d explained to her that there’d been a mistake. She was loving and indulgent and let me have my way, letting my hair grow out and sewing little dresses for me which she called ‘smocks’. She allowed me to play dress-up with her clothes and jewellery, helping me choose wardrobe, painting my nails, and showing me how to apply lipstick…she had the most wonderful collection of clip-on earrings. This life worked fine until it was time for me to start school.
Attempts to attend school as a ‘boy’ did not go well; I refused to wear a boy’s uniform or participate in boys’ activities, and used the girls’ washroom. I was treated quite harshly, by students and teachers alike. It was probably at this point that my mother realised that my femininity was not a phase.
My mother withdrew me from school after a short time and home-schooled me thereafter. The neighbours and other children were left to make their assumptions, and I got to play with the girls.
Secondly, I transitioned to womanhood quite some time ago. Things were not then as they are now, in western countries. Transgender was not a word, we were virtually unknown and invisible, and information and help were very hard to find. Hormonal treatment was crude and surgeries were unrefined and expensive. Society was hostile, transition was dangerous, and secrecy was survival.
It is easy for me to look at young trans men and women today and feel envious. They are transitioning younger than we did, they are happier and prettier, and they get to enjoy more years of their lives free of the soul crushing weight of gender dysphoria and society’s scorn. More of them are surviving to transition, and when they do transition the psychological and medical help is available and is relatively advanced and sympathetic. It is easy for an older woman like me, who went through the change thirty years ago, to feel jealous.
But these photographs were taken fifty years ago, and I am brought up short. What would these women have given to be in my shoes? To have had access to hormones administered by a doctor, instead of bought on the street and taken at the risk of life? What would they have given to be able to transition in a merely hostile society, instead of one that arrested and jailed them as perverts? How would they have envied me, with my small breasts and scarred vagina?
Humility can come as a shock, and these photographs shocked me. Above all because these women are so beautiful. They made the life they could, they lived as the women they were, they banded together, in la Place Blanche, and somehow they made it work. And they were so beautiful.
I have such an ache, such a profound feeling, as I look at their portraits. I wish I could remember actually seeing them in la Place Blanche, but I cannot. And yet I know they were there, even as I was.
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Notes
Nana lived to see the new edition of Les Amies de Place Blanche go to press in 2012. Jacky is still alive at this writing.
As to the many other women in the photographs…the notes say only that many of them died young, of the consequences of sex work, violence, alcohol and drug use, from taking bad street hormones, and from suicide.
Life has been hard for us in the past. Let us hope that is behind us.
Click here for links to many more photographs from this series.
Find out about my childhood here:
Girl, Begun: Why my mother raised me as a girl.
Major monthly financial support is provided by Jayne Tucek, Beth Adele Long, Maya Stroshane, Stevie Lantalia Metke, and J. Morefield.
I make a spare living doing this. You can support my work and get draft previews and my frequent ‘Letters Home’ for less than the cost of a coffee.
