This essay explores the difficulty of handling archival absences in relation to Blackness and Queerness during an era—the early twentieth century—when the intersection of these identities was difficult to occupy publicly, even as it could be hinted at aesthetically. My article focuses on photographs in Archives of American Art’s Ellis Wilson Papers, considering the photographic medium itself, the incomplete traces the papers offer of now-lost works by Wilson, and the inscriptions present on both front and back. Given the fragmentary nature of this evidence, I also address other archival traces and other evidence of Black Queer artist circles around Wilson and reflect critically on the interpretive process. Can we forge language that allows a fuller sense of Wilson’s experience—or that of other artists in his circles—to be explored through the images present in the archives, without labels, but without acquiescing to the stigmatization that can silence these stories?
Rebecca Zorach (Sun,) studied this question.