Hanson took the photographs, while Antheus paired each queen with a signature floral arrangement. So Hanson and Antheus - friends since they were teenagers in Milwaukee, pregaming for Hanson’s Rocky Horror Show performances - decided to do just that: seek out stories of drag “back when.” The duo traveled to 16 cities across the country, taking portraits of 81 legendary queens. I’ve never heard stories of what things were like back in the day. I do remember a time before Drag Race, but many kids today don’t. “I’ve had drag sisters, but never a mother. “I was never part of any traditional drag house,” Hanson tells me. They were awestruck to see so many queens of a certain age. Antheus, who lives in San Francisco, was used to seeing older queens at the show, but Hanson, themselves a drag artist, mostly ran in circles of fellow millennial performers. They’d come for “church,” which is to say, a drag show. On the night of the winter solstice in 2017, Brooklyn-based artist Harry James Hanson and floral stylist Devin Antheus, both 32, paid a visit to Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, a queer bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Photo: Harry James Hanson and Devin Antheus
