Amos Badertscher Images and Stories

Across several decades, self-taught photographer Amos Badertscher (1936 2023) made thousands of photographs of a liminal queer world: young male sex workers (who mostly identified as straight), drag performers and trans pioneers, and Baltimore s inclusive, ribald nightlife. Taken between the 1960s and mid-2000s, these photographs constitute an unparalleled chronicle of a culture of the era particular to Badertscher s hometown of Baltimore, but universally identifiable, one which began to fade with the movement of LGBTQ+ rights and liberation.