Talk:William Dorsey Swann/Archive 2

Erroneous Photo Identification
The photo posted on this page does not represent William Dorsey Swann. No portraits of him are known to exist.

The photo posted here is a postcard published by the Société Industrielle de Photographie in Paris in 1902. It portrays Jack Brown of the American vaudeville duo Gregory and Brown, who caused a sensation when they introduced the cakewalk to the Paris music-hall stage. The film pioneer Louis Lumière even made a short of their act at the Nouveau Cirque.

In addition, the caption attributing the photo to James Gardiner is incorrect. Gardiner is a living collector and writer on the history of photographs of cross-dressing and homosexuality. The photo posted on this page comes from Gardiner's collection, which was purchased by the Wellcome Library in London.

I would strongly urge removal of the photo from the Wikipedia page about William Dorsey Swann, as it has nothing to do with him. GKoskovich (talk) 05:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Per WP:OR, please give a source for this information. I believe you on good faith, but there are many existing articles attributing the image (and many similar) to Swann. I would also like a source for the information provided on Gardiner, as I was unable to find any. Doughbo (talk) 18:16, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Vintage postcards of Charles Gregory and Jack Brown circulate widely on the internet erroneously identified as portrayals of William Dorsey Swann.
 * This misapprehension likely arises from the fact that The Nation (Jan. 31, 2020) used a postcard of the pair as an uncredited, uncaptioned and unexplained illustration for Channing Gerard Joseph's article about Swann, "The First Drag Queen Was a Former Slave."
 * Joseph himself identifies the subject of the postcard as Jack Brown — but you have to dig a little to notice this fact to find the mention in his blurb on the Louis Lumière film that shows the pair in the same costumes as in the real-photo postcard series. Click on "About this Short Film" at lower left on the following page of Joseph's website:
 * http://www.channingjoseph.com/elements/discoveries.html
 * Even Wikimedia Commons elsewhere correctly identifies another postcard of Gregory and Brown:
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Postcard_of_black_female_and_male_impersonators_and_cross-dressing.png
 * As for James Gardiner, here's the listing for his collection at the Wellcome Library in London:
 * https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ctu3s9j3
 * And here's one of his postcards of Gregory and Brown held by the Wellcome Library. As you'll see, the performers are correctly identified:
 * https://wellcomecollection.org/search?query=%22nouveau+cirque%22#yg2hjt8q
 * The caption printed in the real-photo postcards states that it portrays the "Joyeux Negres" show at the Nouveau Cirque in Paris — which William Dorsey Swann most certainly did not appear in.
 * The real-photo postcards of Gregory and Brown have recently been exhibited in "The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1860–1930," an exhibition curated by historian Jonanthan David Katz in Chicago. Scroll down to the link to "Gregory and Brown" for more details:
 * https://wrightwood659.org/exhibitions/the-first-homosexuals-global-depictions-of-a-new-identity-1869-1930/
 * Historians to date have identified no images of William Dorsey Swann. GKoskovich (talk) 00:57, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the thorough research and information. I'll remove the image and modify the others on Commons. Doughbo (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2023 (UTC)