Barbette

Barbette was an American circus trapeze artist. As a teenager he joined a circus and learned the art of trapeze and tightrope walking. Dressed as a girl, he appeared together with another girl as a “twin couple”. After his partner's death, he continued as a solo travesty act. He came to Europe in the mid-1920s and had extraordinary success here too. He was friends with Jean Cocteau, who dedicated an essay to him. For him, Barbette's performance is "a true masterpiece of pantomime: he summarizes all the women that he has closely observed in a parody and becomes the model image of a woman in comparison to which the prettiest girls who are on the program before and after him pale. Because don't forget, we are in that magical light of the theater, in that world of trap doors and false floors, where the true loses its validity [...]." During this time, numerous photos were taken of him by the photographer Man Ray. During his performance in Vienna in November 1926, he was photographed in the d'Ora-Benda and Wilhelm Willinger studios.