[Ashley, April] [8 Photographs Depicting Trans Pioneer April Ashley] 
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N.p., Keystone, (1970?). 8 vintage prints. 20x15 cm. + [Mimeographed text sheet]. N.p., Keystone, (1970?). 25x20 cm. (1) p. Photographs in very fine condition. All with stamps from Keystone Press Agency and Svenskt Pressfoto on the reverse. The text sheet has been folded once down the middle.
Press photographs depicting trans pioneer April Ashley, which appear to be largely undocumented. Among the earliest professionally taken artistic nude photographs of a post-op trans woman. The press photographs were in all likelihood produced in 1970, judging by the accompanying text sheet. The full text of the sheet reads: “A Keystone Feature. Feminine role for April Ashley: The beautiful but pathetic April Ashley is determined to prove that she always has been mentally, and now is physically a girl though recently adjudged by the Courts as being a male. She is now relying on making a career as a model. The divorce from the son and heir to Lord Rowallan, Mr. Corbett, was granted on various legal grounds. Photographs show April Ashley in different poses, but, however the world regard her, she remains fully convinced of her femininity. Keystone/2592/21772”. April Ashley (1935–2021) was a British model and trans pioneer. Born in Liverpool and assigned male at birth, she worked as a sailor before moving to London in 1955, where she began working at Lyons Corner House – a café known as a hangout for artists, bohemians, and gay men. The following year, she moved to Paris and began performing at the nightclub Le Carrousel under the stage name “Toni April”. On May 12, 1960, Ashley underwent gender confirmation surgery in Casablanca, becoming one of the first British persons to do so. Upon returning to the UK, she became a successful model and even appeared in British Vogue. In 1961, she was involuntarily outed as a trans woman when a former friend sold her story to The Sunday People, leading to widespread media attention and scandalous headlines. Ashley married Arthur Corbett in 1963, but the marriage was short-lived. In 1967, Corbett filed for annulment on the grounds that Ashley was “actually” a man – despite knowing her history when they married. The trial took place in 1969, and the marriage was formally dissolved in 1970. Throughout her life, April Ashley remained a prominent trans activist, and her immense significance to the British trans movement has been recognized in several books and documentaries, as well as a major exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool in 2013. Only one of the images can be found in the Digital Transgender Archive, and not as an original, but as a reproduction in a press clipping from News of the World on August 1, 1969, in a censored version, and in an uncensored version in the same publication on February 8, 1970. Although these press photos were clearly also sent to Svenskt Pressfoto, no publication in any Swedish newspaper could be traced in the digitized newspaper archive of the Swedish Royal Library.
4500,- EUR
Differenzbesteuert/Subject to margin taxation
Sachgebiete: Genderstudies, Photographie
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