William Goldman

Early life and family William Goldman was born in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, on March 27, 1856 to parents also from Pennsylvania. He was educated in Reading.

Career

The woman on the left is thought to be Sallie Shearer, owner of the brothel on the corner of North 8th and Walnut streets in Reading. William Goldman, c.1892. In 1876, Goldman entered the photographic profession working for E. E. Hafer. After learning the business for 15 years, he opened his own studio in 1891 at 602 Penn Street, Reading. He built a successful business using the reputation and training he had acquired with Hafer and made a specialism of carbonettes when they were introduced. He became treasurer of the State Photographers' Association.

Goldman's collection, which has been compared to that of E. J. Bellocq in New Orleans, was found by Robert Flynn Johnson around 2010 in the stock of a postcard dealer at a fair in Concord, California. He initially bought only two photographs before visiting the dealer at her home in the Sierra Foothills and gradually purchasing the rest of the collection. The dealer told him that the photographs had been bought by her late husband at a gun show in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had originally been mounted in albums from which they had been removed. Johnson was able to place and approximately date the photographs because one showed a woman reading a copy of the Reading Eagle dated August 14, 1892. After research in Reading and consulting local historians, Johnson was able to identify Goldman as the photographer. three images of a black woman, a pregnant woman, and a nude photograph of Goldman that may be a self-portrait. There are many dual portraits of women but only one mixed-sex image and none of the images show sexual activity. Only two of the images are set outdoors. With one exception, the women are all white, there being separate houses employing black women such as Harry Weaver's "Mahogany Hall" at 729 North Twelfth.

While some of the pictures appear to have been taken at Shearer's house, others include props, sets, and costumes characteristic of a professional photographic studio such as the set of images showing a crescent moon and others in which women are shown draped like Greek goddesses or praying.

The photographs also suggest that Goldman was aware of contemporary social debates such as in the image of a nude, and possibly pregnant, woman resting her hand on John Cowan's book The Science of a New Life (1869), Goldman's interest in the nude female form, which was difficult for him to photograph using the "respectable" women of his time as models, is obvious, as is the risk of scandal and ruin had his collection become widely known in Victorian Reading.

Gallery Photographs from the Goldman collection, all c.1892 and subjects unidentified.

Death and legacy William Goldman died on January 25, 1922, and was buried at the Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading.

In 2018, photographs from his collection were exhibited at the Ricco/Maresca gallery in New York and subsequently at the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco. A book about his life and collection was published by Glitterati Editions in 2018 with a text by Robert Flynn Johnson, a foreword by Dita Von Teese, a preface by gender historian professor Ruth Rosen, and an essay on costume by fashion historian and curator Dennita Sewell.