culture.wnyc.org – By Carolina A. Miranda
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Christer Stromholm: Les Amies de Place Blanche at the International Center of Photography In the 1950s and early 1960s, France was experiencing an ultra-conservative pendulum swing. Charles de Gaulle reintroduced laws that allowed the state to seize the properties of landlords who allowed prostitution on their premises. Transvestites were regularly harassed by police, arrested for being “dressed as women outside the period of carnival.” In this climate, the Swedish-born Stromholm moved to Paris and began photographing the transsexual prostitutes who frequented the Place Blanche (where the Moulin Rouge is located)…