Images 13 & 14: Alice and Gertrude met at a resort in the Catskills. From some angles the freedom of being and loving that they built in their subsequent lives looks very much like the sense of privacy, release and escape that they clearly experienced there. To walk, to wander, to wonder, to read, to gaze, to discover, and to share: Trude re-enacted and Alice commemorated that freedom in these photographs. For the rest of their lives, they would travel together – lovely, long, extravagant trips, not especially in terms of money, but in terms of the freedom they found in the world together.
Text by: Laura Wexler loves photography and teaches its history at Yale, where she is Professor of American Studies, Film & Media Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies.
A lot of what she loves, she learned from Alice, whose spirit cheers her on.