Jillian Jonas was the house photographer at the legendary boy bar on St. Mark’s Place in the mid 1990’s, where she captured thousands of images of drag performers who mixed gender-bending and illusion with downtown in-your-face attitude. This collection includes images not only from boy bar, but the Pyramid Club, Wigstock, the Gay Pride Festival, Jackie 60 and various other downtown nightlife and performance venues of the early-to-mid 1990s. Her pictures capture a golden age of LGBTQ+ nightlife and performance, as well as an edgy slice of life when drag and blurred boundaries of gender were just beginning to make inroads into the broader public consciousness, largely through this vibrant local scene.

From Village Preservation's Historic Image Archive, view more historic photos like this here.