GenderTalk.com – Photographs by Loren Cameron
From it’s striking cover, Body Alchemy grabs you and won’t let go until you’ve delved into the mysteries revealed by beautiful photographs and succinct text presented in a tastefully artful setting. This is, quite simply, a gorgeous book, on a subject so unconventional it boggles the mind. Caught within it’s pages, held lovingly and presented honestly, without undue trappings, are the boldest of a new generation of transsexual men. These are people born into “female” bodies, who are living as men at least some of the time, and changing their bodies to suit their desires. Just as bodybuilders sculpt their bodies to fit their personal aesthetic, so too do transsexuals mold their bodies around an ideal, though for these folks the ideal is not about muscle or fitness, but rather gender.
Photographer Loren Cameron also serves as a subject for about one third of the book. He is obviously a man who works out, and his body as photographed is about as pleasing as I can imagine, for that of a man. His animal-like tattoos create an effect like that of a caged beast, virile and potent. On the cover, he is posed in what I took at first to be a “muscle man” pose, but which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a shot of him injecting himself with a syringe in the upper buttock. What at first appeared a pose, becomes instead a riveting testimony to both suffering and strength. It also establishes a level of tension that heightens the subject matter.