  Roz Joseph (1926–2019) was a San Francisco-based photographer who in the mid-1970s captured the pageantry and activism of the city’s diverse drag cultures at Gay Freedom Day parades, Halloween celebrations, Imperial Court coronations and especially the elaborate drag and costume balls that attracted thousands of revelers to the city. 

 Curated by Joseph Plaster.

  This exhibition was on view at the GLBT Historical Society Museum from October 2015 to March 2016.

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  Roz Joseph was born Rosalind Malamud on June 30, 1926, in the Bronx. She received a bachelor’s degree in education in 1947 from City College of New York, where she also pursued postgraduate courses in art and photography.

In 1948, she married advertising professional and writer Elliott Joseph. The couple lived in Paris from 1950 to 1951, then returned to New York. In her hometown and during extensive travels in Europe, North Africa and elsewhere, Joseph found people and places to capture in black and white. Some of her images recall the great French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, and all reflect her eye for composition, the built environment and human stories. One of her shots received the 1963 Saturday Review Photo Prize. While continuing her work as a photographer, Ms. Joseph also developed a career in higher education, ultimately serving as executive assistant to the chair of the City College of New York Psychology Department. (Source: The Bay Area Reporter)

Joseph began documenting drag queens in June 1975 at San Francisco’s annual Gay Freedom Day Parade. 

“Like most people,” she wrote in the late 1970s, “I’ve always loved surprises, and the parade was filled with them. The fun, the color, the wild, unpredictable and good-humored scenes. Images I could not let pass by.”

San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, 1978; photograph by Elaine Gay Jarvis, Elaine Gay Jarvis papers (2018-90), GLBT Historical Society.png

She spent the next three years shooting eye-popping looks and gender-bending theatrics, decades before RuPaul became a household name. 

  In 1970, the couple moved to San Francisco, where Joseph turned her lens to documenting the city’s drag queens. Many of the queens were associated with a charitable organization called the Imperial Court. Founded in 1965 by celebrated drag performer and gay activist José Sarria, the Court raises funds for social service and activist organizations. 
 

San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, 1978; photograph by Crawford Wayne Barton, Crawford Wayne Barton collection (1993-11), GLBT Historical Society.

“When a person has been involved in the gay life, the gay community life, to be very actively engaged in it, he may choose to run for the office of Emperor or Empress with the expectations of, if being elected, he can do a better job for community relations between the gays and the straights. 

“Primarily, either office — Empress or Emperor — is a figurehead of the city to represent the gay community in the city or if they go up and down the coast or wherever. They hold various functions like the Closet Ball, the Beaux Arts Ball, and things like that. Sometimes it’s directly in their name of their court or it’s for the Tavern Guild or the Council of Emperors — to raise funds for Operation Concern which is an organization out at Presbyterian Hospital for gays in the hospital...

“There is a kind of community bank you might say, that people who are in trouble or in need, with phone bills, or their rent, they can apply to the People’s Fund and they will be given the money — not so much as a loan but as an outright grant or gift.” 

 — Dick Elridge

In search of images, Joseph attended many court events in San Francisco, including the Coronation of the Empress de San Francisco; the Grand Duke and Duchess Ball; and the Closet Ball, at which men who had never before dressed in drag were coaxed by friends to “come out.” 

The images Joseph captured also document the last generation of drag before AIDS devastated the city. The GLBT Historical Society's Obituary Database reveals that many of the individuals in this exhibition died of HIV-related complications in the 1980s, about a decade after Joseph snapped their photos.

  
Joseph hoped to publish a book based on her drag-ball series, tentatively titled Golden Gays, but she was not able to find a publisher. 

Imperial Princess contingent, Castro Street Parade, ca. 1978-1979; photograph by Crawford Wayne Barton, Crawford Wayne Barton collection (1993-11), GLBT Historical Society.

Gay Freedom Day Parade, 1978; photograph by Elaine Gay Jarvis, Elaine Gay Jarvis papers (2018-90), GLBT Historical Society.

She stored the photos and negatives in her Russian Hill apartment until donating them to the archives of the GLBT Historical Society in 2010. Lost from public view for almost four decades, the images attracted national attention when they became the subject of “Reigning Queens: The Lost Photos of Roz Joseph” in 2015.

 
   Continue scrolling to see the online selection of images from the original exhibition. 
 Click on the individual images to enlarge photos and read captions and credits.

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Untitled, ca. 1970s; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.

“Spit Curl” at the COYOTE Hookers Ball, ca. 1970s; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.

“Ricky”, ca. 1970s; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.

"Frieda, Ninth Empress of San Francisco's Imperial Court" at the Streetwalkers and Hookers Ball, ca. 1976; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.“Pay homage or be expelled” was her motto, and it prevaile… — "Frieda, Ninth Empress of San Francisco's Imperial Court" at the Streetwalkers and Hookers Ball, ca. 1976; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.
“Pay homage or be expelled” was her motto, and it prevailed not only during her reign but long afterward. Born near Newark, NJ in 1927, Fred Hilliard “Frieda” was a nurse in San Francisco and active in the Tavern Guild. Elected the Ninth Empress of San Francisco in 1974, she “had very strong opinions and was not easily swayed,” according to the *Bay Area Reporter*.

"Ambi Sextrous," ca. 1976; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.

“Jack and Bill,” ca. 1970s; photograph by Roz Joseph, Roz Joseph Photographs (2010-08), GLBT Historical Society.

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Joseph Plaster is curator in public humanities for the Sheridan Libraries and an assistant research scholar at the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. His research and teaching focuses on collaborative public humanities, performance studies, interdisciplinary oral history and queer studies. He is currently working on the Peabody Ballroom Experience, a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and Baltimore’s ballroom community. Other projects include youth workshops archiving the history of Pennsylvania Avenue, Baltimore’s black arts and entertainment district, and an “Engaged Humanities” public speaker series. His current book project, under contract with Duke University Press, combines archival, ethnographic and oral-history research to explore the social worlds that abandoned and runaway queer street youth, their patrons, and their protectors have created over the past century in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

Special thanks to Roz Joseph, who generously donated many of her prints to the GLBT Historical Society in 2010 and also loaned personal items for the original exhibition in 2015; and to Don Romesburg, who accepted Joseph’s prints to the archives and originally proposed an exhibition based on her work. 
  
2015-2016 Museum Exhibition Team

  Museum Manager: Jeremy Prince

  Exhibition Coordinators: Elisabeth Cornu, Ramón Silvestre 

  Exhibition Installers and Volunteers: Deborah Lohrke, Fred Baumer, Tom Burtch

  Communications: Gerard Koskovich, Marke Bieschke

  Media Consultant: Adrian Parra

  Graphics Consultant: Jeff Raby, Creatis Group, Inc.

  Events: Timothy Fisher

  Framing: Galleria Scola

Nalini Elias, Director of Exhibitions and Museum Experience, Website Design
Mark Sawchuk, Ph.D., Communications Manager, Editor
Ramón Silvestre, Ph.D., Museum Registrar and Curatorial Specialist
Contact, GLBT Historical Society

  
Copyright © 2020 The GLBT Historical Society; all rights reserved. 
The contents of this exhibition may not be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.

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