Who was Émilie Loisset? In fiction, journalism, and even riding manuals, her death is reenacted over and over as melodrama, cautionary tale, and plot twist.

The lost stories of the transgressive horsewomen of turn-of-the-century Paris. 

In Susanna Forrest’s Écuryères series, she unearths the lost stories of the transgressive horsewomen of turn-of-the-century Paris. Jenny de Rahden lies on the bed, half raised on an elbow. A gray-haired man who shares her elegant, strong-nosed profil…

The lives of these horsewomen were filled with ambiguity and dare-devilry, sex and sexism, glamor and skill.

In the late summer of 1866, a black equestrian stuntwoman made her Paris debut and galvanized the city. She was known only as “Sarah the African.”

Selika Lazevski exists in six photographs and nowhere else. She was a black Amazon in Belle Epoque Paris, a horsewoman without a horse.

  Selika Lazevski exists in six black-and-white photographs and nowhere else. I first saw her when those six studio portraits appeared on Tumblr in 2012. They quickly spread around the Internet as readers asked, Who is she? But although I’ve…