*For much of the late 19th- to mid- 20th Century, materials referencing sex or gender were deemed obscene, prurient or pornographic & were thus mailed wrapped in plain brown paper to keep their contents hidden from the eyes of the censors
Each of these pieces is a montage of photographs from my personal collection of Cabinet Cards and Cartes de Visite from the American Gilded Age, the period generally considered from 1865 to 1900. My collection encompasses a few hundred photographic portraits with at least one from each of the fifty states. I discovered much about the photographers who took these images and the history of the cities where operated their businesses. But I know next to nothing about the people themselves. I could surmise that they include students, bankers, gamblers, civil war veterans, farmers etc. So in a sense they were already in a closet, their inner selves hidden forever.
