Andrea Modica, a photographer who works in the long-term documentary tradition, is known for her portrayals of people who comprise groups. First with Treadwelll for which she chronicled the daily life of a girl named Barbara and her family in the eponymous Upstate New York farming town between 1986 and 2001; later with Minor League, for which she photographed the New York Yankees' bush league during spring-training camp, in 1993; and most recently with January 1, for which she photographed a group of Philadelphia Mummers for one day a year over a period of ten years.

Said to be the longest continually running folk spectacle in America, the Mummers’ Parade is known for its outlandish costumes and boisterous, boozy, primarily male masquerading, which traditionally—and controversially—includes blackface. Said to date back to ancient Rome, it arrived here with the first group of Nordic immigrants to Philadelphia in colonial times, and was embraced by George Washington as a holiday tradition during his presidency. In 1901, the Mummers Parade became officially sponsored by the city.

In the Afterword to her book on the subject, January 1, Andrea Modica writes:

“Each New Year’s Day in Philadelphia, merrymakers from across the city converge on South Philadelphia for something that at times resembles a well-choreographed parade of highly skilled performers, and at other times is more a  spreading, shambling mob of happy, boozy, primarily men in costumes. These are the Philadelphia Mummers. The event is an almagamation of cultural traditions that has evolved in working-class neighborhoods for over 300 years. Beginning as small bands of informal revelers scattered throughout the city, today’s parade includes recognized performance divisions and organized clubs that compete within those divisions.

"The group represented by this collection of photographs are the Wenches, a subset of the Comic division, who hew closely to the Mummers’ anarchic, free-wheeling past. The all-male Wenches don female garb, including dresses, undergarments, purses, parasols, wigs, make-up and golden shoes, in tribute to the iconic song of Mummery, Oh, Dem Golden Slippers. The Wench tradition, and often the dresses themselves, are passed down from one generation to the next, with some groups including all the male members of a family, from young boys to great grandfathers. Like so many clubs and teams, this group embodies a male mystique, a paradox of inclusion and exclusion that fueled my attention beyond the aesthetics of the parade.”

January 1 (L’Artiere 2018) will be premiered next week at The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD, with a signing on Friday, April 6 from 6:30 to 7:30 om at L’Artiere, Booth 83. Info The Photography Show Presented by AIPAD, April 5-8 at Pier 94, 12^th Avenue at 55^th Street, NY, NY Info

Andrea Modica is an American photographer and professor of photography at Drexel University, in Philadelphia.