Queer Eye: How to Identify Cross-Dressing in Family Photograph Albums
By Dr Marion Stell and Professor Celmara Pocock, 2025 Rainbow Research Fellows | 31 October 2025
This blog was written by 2025 Rainbow Research Fellows, Dr Marion Stell and Professor Celmara Pocock.
This is part of their research on the project: Queering the Lens: Cross-Dressing in Family Photograph Albums.
Acc APE-92, Dath Family Photograph Album, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Are we looking at a man or a woman? A girl or a boy? A man dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a man? Are they just a masculine-looking woman or a feminine-looking man? How deliberate is this confusion?
These questions often crop up as we peruse all the family photograph albums in the State Library of Queensland in the search for examples of cross-dressing. And it is no wonder that these questions constantly arise – cross-dressing is at its heart an attempt to disguise, to impersonate, to appear as something that you are not. Participants go to great lengths to be convincing. They seek to trick their audience into believing that they are genuinely the opposite of what they are. We need to keep our wits about us.
It is especially difficult to recognise and unpick these disguises when looking at historic black and white photographs. These are often small or even tiny prints, some are faded or even blurred. Cross-dressing is hidden in plain sight among photographs of everyday scenes and family activities.
The opportunity to interrogate the subject, to ask them what the photograph represents and why has often long passed. No catalogue record addresses our questions. We need to rely on our intuitions and scrutinise each image for subtle clues, seeking some common and predictable characteristics and patterns to help us determine what they are.
How then can researchers and users of the collections find these images? This blog describes how we have navigated our way through the collections in search of cross-dressing, and how you might approach your own family albums to find similar instances of disguise and trickery.
And have no doubt – images of cross-dressing are highly likely to be present in your own family albums. You just need to know how to find and ‘see’ them. How to adopt a ‘queer eye’. In doing so you will be rewarded with new knowledge about how your parents, grandparents and other relatives and friends spent their leisure time and had some fun.
Here are a handful of some of the many instances and examples we have uncovered and how we have ‘read’ them with a ‘queer eye’.
Which Family Albums?
Even though our goal is to physically examine every family photograph album in the library collection, experience has revealed that certain albums are more likely to yield the results we are searching for.
We now know that there are circumstances where cross-dressing occurs more frequently in society – in separate, remote and isolated communities, removed from everyday life. This includes pastoral stations, military barracks or on ships or tropical islands; at fancy dress parties, country and city dances, guesthouses and holiday camps; sporting events and race meetings. These are all contexts in which images of cross-dressing can be found. We find images in circumstances where people have some leisure time and are searching for some light amusement or diversion. Thus, cross-dressing is often closely associated with joyful occasions and indulged in as light-hearted and socially acceptable entertainment.
In the Backyard
In order to cross-dress, people need access to suitable clothing, and often put considerable time and effort into their preparation. This often occurs at home, and so, as well as examining the parties and gatherings, we look closely in people’s backyards. Typically this is where a dress-rehearsal or the moment before going out attracts the family photographer.
Series of three photographs in a family album taken in a suburban backyard showing a woman dressed as a man, and a man dressed as a woman, with the last image showing the couple posing together. The cross-dressers adopt gendered stances and coded props to signify their performed gender; a pith helmet, cane and suit worn by the woman, and a head scarf, dress, and long cigarette holder adopted by the man. When they pose together they retain the performance of their reversed genders in their stance and body language.
Lahey Family photographs and papers, Acc 28867, Box 17301, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Fancy Dress
One of the most popular and obvious places to find people engaged in cross-dressing is during fancy dress occasions – perhaps a party or a ball, a race outing or a sporting group. The whole event represents an occasion for hilarity and fun, and is highly photogenic.
Among a group of revellers in costumed fancy dress are some examples of cross-dressing including men dressed as ‘I’m Susie’ and an old woman (detail right).
Bell, J. W. & Murray Views (1920) Bell Photograph Albums 1910-1950, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
When fancy-dress characters are cross-dressed, they may be either generalised compilations and representations using typically gendered clothes and accessories, or they might seek to represent a specific character of the opposite gender. Characters tend to be those who are instantly recognisable, but the crossing of gender makes them especially amusing for their audience.
Accessories and Props
Clothing itself is highly gendered and cross-dressing women often wore trousers, buttoned shirts and braces. As women’s clothing changed throughout the twentieth century to more liberating and practical styles it can become sometimes harder to read the signals of cross-dressing in women. It seems men wearing dresses remains hilarious and obvious to everyone. But not all cross-dressing is easy to see.
As researchers looking for clues to identify instances of cross-dressing in photographs, accessories and props are often key. Accessories tend to be highly gendered and casual cross-dressers draw on this to enhance their representations of the other. Men dressing as women are often signalled through the adornment of large flowery hats, scarves, head scarves, make-up, open parasols, aprons and pinafores. For women dressing as men, ties, caps, cigarettes, cigars, moustaches, canes, top hats, sailor’s caps and pith helmets are key signifiers. They also help women to represent men rather than boys.
Spontaneous performance of cross-dressing – which can attract just as much hilarity as a fully staged instance – can also be achieved by adopting or transposing a single simple prop.
Misplaced Hats
A man lounges on the grass in a woman’s large hat, Unidentified Family Photograph Album, Acc 29082, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
A woman on the lower right wears an oversize sailor’s cap, Marr Family Photograph Albums, Acc APO-30, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Wandering Parasols
In the group photo on the left three men and two women pose for the camera, the women holding parasols. In the next photograph on the right the same men have commandeered the parasols and two of them wear a flower behind their ears. Challinor Family Photograph Albums, Acc 6644, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
On the Edge
On the right edge of the photograph, two men use a spontaneous pose with legs akimbo, one with a parasol, to create some fun, outside the formal grouping, Bell Family Photograph Album, Acc 6027, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Captions
Sometimes a cross-dressing photograph can be signalled, revealed or understood by an original handwritten or typed caption in a family photograph album. These captions can clearly signal that there is trickery involved and that the subject is cross-dressing. Here the complier or curator of the family album wants the viewer to know that everything is not what it seems – in case you miss it. Often the caption adds to the hilarity of the image and is key to relating and maintaining the fun and joy of cross-dressing over time. This certainly makes the case that when library or archive sources are digitised, it is important to also capture the original caption as part of the photograph, which may appear below or on the verso of the print. Sometimes the caption ‘makes’ the image and is an integral part of its narrative.
‘Girls Will be Boys’: Girls wear trousers, plain shirts, jacket and caps while standing hands in pockets, shoulders back and legs astride to complete the impersonation, Lorenz Family Photograph Albums, Acc 5892, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
The caption for this photograph of a man in a woman’s dress, scarf and hat cheekily asks the viewer, ‘Do ah look nice?’, Thomas Francis Lyons Photograph Album, Acc 27970, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
The paradox of this image which shows a man, dressed as a woman with skirt, shirt and hat, but smoking a pipe, is heightened by the caption asking whether s/he wants some tobacco in her/his pipe, ‘Bit O’ Baccy Mister’, Thomas Francis Lyons Photograph Album, Acc 27970, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Here the captions seek to alert the viewer to the cross-dressing, and the amusement of the moment.
Stance or Pose
Because men and women often sit, stand, lie down, dance and pose for the camera in fairly strict gender-defining ways, it is possible for subjects to mimic another gender with very little ‘dressing’.
Here a soldier dressed in military uniform deliberately adopts an exaggerated feminine pose for the camera, by positioning his chin, head, neck and hands and using a side-on pose, Bell Family Photograph Albums, Acc 6027, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
SWIPE TO VIEW PHOTOS
Three photos where men, although dressed in male clothing including suits, ties, casual clothes and work wear, deliberately mimic for the onlooker and photographer the body language of women dancing. They use the position of their arms, legs and feet to evoke a non-masculine gender. In the first a man dances with a parasol, (Waters and Jackman Family of Sorata, South Brisbane, Photograph Album, Acc 29919), in the second two men sashay across the grass (Dath Family Photograph Album, Acc APE-92) and in the third photograph, the caption describes Col and Geordie as the ‘Bright Sisters’, as they mimic the performance of two young women – Maude and Dorothy Bright who were Australian vaudeville performers in the 1910s (Evelyn Terry Papers, Acc 9917), all John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
As already outlined, pose is also a significant part of people who are dressed in clothes of another gender. And the stance or pose that people adopt for the camera is an essential part of the performance of cross-dressing.
A woman poses as a ‘Hayseed’ (which was a slang term for an unsophicticated country bumpkin in the 1930s), dressed in men’s clothing of oversize trousers and braces, a jaunty hat and stance with hips thrust forward, hands in pockets, legs wide apart, and a straw protuding from her mouth, Duryea Family Photograph Albums, Acc 29587, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
SWIPE TO VIEW PHOTOS
Four young women pose in a variety of men’s clothing – trousers, blazers, hats, open neck shirts, ties, each holding a cigarette – the effect is completed in the parody of adopting a stance more typical of men, Dath Family Photograph Album, Acc APE-92, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
Four young women pose in a variety of men’s clothing – trousers, blazers, hats, open neck shirts, ties, each holding a cigarette – the effect is completed in the parody of mimicking a popular pose for men photographed outdoors, as they sprawl on the grass. Dath Family Photograph Album, Acc APE-92, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
The Screams
As we have seen, props signal partial or accessorised cross-dressing, sometimes a spontaneous gesture to add humour to a situation and hence to the photograph. As we interrogate a photograph we look for clues that the humour is deliberate and ask is the subject laughing, are others in the photograph laughing? Is there a cheekiness to the image?
Although these images can be missed, there is a desire that the crossing of gender not be misinterpreted, but remembered for the fun that it invoked. The compilers of the Lorenz family photograph albums (Acc 5892), for instance, left a note on the inside cover of one of their albums (an old school exercise book) pointing the reader to the presence of some anomalies, such as cross-dressing, within the album. They write that it contains odd size pictures, but also ‘Screams (wherein we are not flattered by the camera) and these are added to give a laugh…’.
5892 Lorenz Family Photograph Albums 1917-1962, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
What defines many of the images we have uncovered in this search for cross-dressing is the obvious humour in the situation – whether portrayed through accessories, clothing, characterisation, pose or added caption.
When humour is absent, the presence of a cross-dresser in a photograph may be more difficult to interpret. On some of these occasions the cross-dressing may be conducted in a more private sphere and speaks to a more intimate and private enjoyment in dressing as another gender that is more transgressive. Nevertheless, a photograph is still recorded, and a ‘third party’ photographer present.
Which Family Albums are Unlikely?
Although we have diligently searched them, no material is evident in the formal family portrait albums of the nineteenth century. As the camera is new and the cost of photography a consideration, many photographs from the nineteenth century are studio-based, and taken by a professional photographer. The portraits formally record family members and their lineage – parents, grandparents and children, decked out in their best clothes. There is no spontaneity or fun.
As we often find photographs in albums where the subjects are having some fun, it is unlikely to find cross-dressing in formal albums such as official government reports, firm or business records. We seldom find cross-dressing where people are engaged in hard work or struggling to survive – in mining and timber camps, and working on infrastructure projects, where there is little ‘down-time’. But serendipity always plays a part and we rule nothing out! The search continues.
Call for Photographs
If you have examples of cross-dressing in your family photograph albums please contact us at the library on qldmemory@slq.qld.gov.au.
Read other blogs by Marion and Celmara
Read more blogs about Queensland's LGBTIQA+ history from previous Rainbow Research Fellows.
The 2025 Rainbow Research Fellowship is generously supported by the Queensland Library Foundation.
Watch this video to explore Marion and Celmara's research project, and don’t miss the full video highlighting all the 2025 Queensland Memory Awards recipients and their inspiring projects.
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