Amazon.com Review
The idea of gender is no long as fixed as it once was:
Tootsie,
La Cage aux Folles, and Milton Berle saw to that. But none of this has prepared us for Loren Cameron's amazing portraits of transsexuals. Beautifully reproduced and complemented with notes and short essays, these portraits of women who are now men may startle, but they will also make you marvel at the genuine complexities of life, sex, and desire.
Body Alchemy might have been a curiosity, like Diane Arbus's photographs of those outside the physical and cultural mainstream, but Cameron's art is so empathetic, so precise, that we are left in awe and with a new understanding of the realities of being human.
Review
"Amazing..." --
The Advocate"An irreplaceably valued documentation of a cultural moment" --
Diane Middlebrook, author, Anne Sexton: A Biography"Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Dianne Arbus among many others have all trained their lenses on the transgendered figure. Never have the transgendered seriously photographed their own. Not until Loren Cameron, that is." --
Kate Bornstein, author, Gender Outlaw"At just the moment postmodernism would have us believe there is nothing photography hasn't already shown us, Loren Cameron's images defy all expectations. Welcome to the future." --
Doug Nickel"Cameron's strategy is to allow his subjects to speak for themselves, creating an informative and emotional document that is likely the first of its kind." --
Barbara DeGenevieve, Camerawork"I was so drawn to Loren Cameron's photographs that I went to see the original exhibition on which the book is based several times. Like all good art it demystifies its subjects. Where other photographs of transgendered people, even those taken by talented outsiders, inevitably emphasize their 'otherness' and view them theatrically, Loren Cameron makes them seem so immediately familiar (even when the poses and nudity could seem, in other hands, shocking and confrontational). Perhaps because the subjects themselves are so comfortable with their own bodies and with the participant-observer, we are comfortable with tehm, too. No matter how distanced and detatched we may feel when we start to view these works, it is simply impossible to 'gawk' at them, to remove ourselves from the intimate experience we are witnessing." --
Richard M. Levine"Loren Cameron's razor-sharp vision compels us to focus on the complex transition from which transsexual men emerge. Cameron's photographs are as exquisite as they are meaningful." --
Leslie Feinberg, author, Stone Butch Blues and Transgender WarriorsThis collection of transsexual photos and interviews is not recommended for general library purchase, but any collection specializing in sexual/gender issues and any personal collector will find this a unique, intriguing survey of the transsexual experience. Anticipate graphic yet artistic black and white photos. --
Midwest Book Review