Loren Cameron

Loren Rex Cameron (born 1959) is an American photographer, author and transsexual activist. His work includes portraiture and self-portraiture which consist of lesbian and transsexual bodies in both clothed and nude form. Cameron's photography captures images of the transsexual body that "provide an affirming visual resource for transgendered people and to demystify the transsexual body for the non-transgendered viewer."^[1]

Biography

Loren Rex Cameron was born in Pasadena, California in 1959. He moved to rural Arkansas in 1969 after his mother's death, where he lived as a self-described tomboy on his father's farm. By the age of sixteen, Cameron identified both sexually and socially as a lesbian and encountered homophobic hostility in the small town where he lived. At this time, Cameron quit school and left his home to travel the country seeking work as a construction laborer and other blue collar employment. In 1979, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he identified socially with the lesbian community until the age of twenty-six, when he confronted his dissatisfaction with the female body with which he was born. Cameron's interest in photography coincided with the beginning of his physical changes as he documented his own physiological transition from female to male at this time. Despite his lack of formal training, beginning in 1993 Cameron studied the rudiments of photography and began to compassionately photograph the transsexual community. Since 1994, he has given lectures on his work at universities, educational conferences and art institutes. By 1995, Cameron's photographs had been shown in solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Minneapolis, a Los Angeles.

Works

Loren Rex Cameron's photography and writing was first published by Cleis Press in 1996. Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits, documented Cameron's personal experience of transition from female to male, his life as a man, and the everyday lives of transmen he knew. Body Alchemy was received with much positive acclaim and became a double 1996 Lambda Literary Award winner. It remains his most well-known work to date, though he has since published other photographic works.

Cameron's images have been exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, in Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in Mexico City, Mexico. They have been published in numerous books such as Transgender Warriors (Leslie Feinberg, 1996) and Constructing Masculinity: Discussions in Contemporary Culture (Routledge, 1995), as well as in various magazines.^[2][3] He has also posed for photographers such as Daniel Nicoletta, Amy Arbus, and Howard Shatz.

Cameron lectures throughout the United States at universities and other venues, including Smith College, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, the University of California at Berkeley, Penn State, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In May 2008, Cameron presented his work at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. On television, he has been profiled on the Discovery Health Channel's LGBT-themed one-hour special Sex Change: Him to Her, on the National Geographic Channel's "Taboo" Sexual Identity" series. He has also been interviewed in the magazine, The New Yorker.^[2][4][5] Cameron's photographs document the lives and bodies of both transsexual men and women, providing positive, beautiful images of transgendered people. His first published works (Body Alchemy and Man Tool: The Nuts and Bolts of Female-to-Male Surgery) consists largely of self-portraits, FTM body modifications, and portraits of other female to male transsexuals. More recently published work is a diverse and unprecedented representation of both female and male transsexuals, portraits and classical nudes (Body Photographs by Loren Cameron Volume 1 and 2, and Cameron Correspondence 1997-2003, Taller Experimental Cuerpos Pintados 2003).

A current photographic project focuses on the sexuality of gay FTMs.

Books by Loren Cameron

• Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits. 1996, Cleis Press. ISBN 978-1-57344-062-2.
• Man Tool: The Nuts and Bolts of Female-to-Male Surgery, 2001, Zero eBooks.
• Photographs by Loren Cameron Volume 1. 2003, Taller Experimental Cuerpos Pintados.
• Photographs by Loren Cameron Volume 2. 2003, Taller Experimental Cuerpos Pintados.
• Cameron Correspondence 1997-2001 Volume 3. 2003, Taller Experimental Cuerpos Pintados.

Reviews and articles on Loren Cameron

• Birmingham Institute of Art and Design - Dept. of Arts - Article Press, Birmingham, UK, 2007
• The Transgender Reader - by Susan Stryker, Ben Singer, et al., Temple University Press, 2007
• Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs - Edited by Jonathan Ames, Vintage Press, 2005
• Athanor XXIII - Florida State University, Dept. of Art History, The Museum of Fine Arts Press, 2005 - Essay by Stefanie Snider.
• Queer Theory - Edited by Iain Morland and Annabelle Willox, Palgrave, 2004
• Light in the Darkroom: Photography and the Realization of Loss - by Jay Prosser, University of Minnesota Press, 2004
• Camera Obscura 56 : Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies - Vol. 19, Number 2, Duke University Press 2004 Article by Melanie Taylor P.h. D. (critical analysis of Romaine Brooks and Loren Cameron’s work, artist’s photographs illustrate)
• The Transiting Self: The Nude Self-Portraits of Transman Loren Cameron and Hermaphrodyke Del La Grace Volcano - by Tee A. Corinne - College Art Association Conference paper, 2002
• Gender Issues In Art Therapy - by Susan Hogan, PhD., JKP Press, 2002
• Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality - by Jerrold Greenberg, Clint Bruess, and Debra Haffner, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2001 and second edition, 2002
• Bisexual Spaces - by Claire Hemmings, Routledge Publishing, 2002
• Extremities - Edited by Jason Tougaw and Nancy K. Miller, The University of Illinois Press, 2002
• The Woman I Was Not Born To Be - by Aleshia Brevard, Temple University Press, 2001
• Advocate, 2001
• Frontiers, 1999
• Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality - by Jay Prosser, The Columbia University Press, New York, 1998
• Bang, 1998
• Gay Times UK, 1998
• Circles, 1998
• Marie Claire (Italy), 1998
• Domain Matrix: Performing Lesbian at the End of Print Culture - by Sue Ellen Case, Indiana Press, 1997
• Psychology - First and Second editions, college text by Don/Sandra Hockenbury, Worth Publishers, 1997
• Hx for Her, 1997
• Citizen K International, 1997
• Diva, 1997
• B-Glad, 1997
• Next Magazine, 1997
• Utne Reader, 1996
• Out, 1996
• Puckered Up, 1996
• Out Magazine, 1996
• Fabula, 1996
• Gay By The Bay - by Susan Stryker/Jim Van Buskirk, Chronicle Books, 1996
• Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross Dressing and Sex Changing, 1996
• Transgender Warriors - by Leslie Feinberg, Beacon Press, 1996
• Constructing Masculinity - Academic Essays, Routledge Publishing, 1995
• Deneuve, 1994
• Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, 1994
• Girlfriends, 1994/1997
• The New Yorker, 1991
• On Our Backs, 1991 and 1995

Awards, honors, and recognitions

• Lambda Literary Award, Inaugural Transgender Category, 1997
• Lambda Literary Award, Small Press Category, 1997
• Lambda Literary Award Nominee, Best Photography Category, 1997
• Inaugural Pride Award FTM Intl., 1997
• Lambda Literary Award, 1996

References and footnotes

All biographical information is taken from Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits and the biography section of Online Alchemy as of November 11, 2008.

Selected filmography

Film and Television (a partial list)

• Taboo - "Sexual Identity", Beyond Productions Inc. for National Geographic Channel (documentary profiling artist in segment, including image usages, 2006).
• Boy I Am - Sam Feder Productions (documentary profiling Body Alchemy, and photo usages, 2006).
• Sex Changes - Beyond Productions Inc. for Discovery Health Channel (television documentary profiling artist in segment, photograph usages, 2005).
• Sex Files III (Sexual Secrets) - Exploration Production Inc. for Discovery Channel (television documentary profiling Body Alchemy, Man Tool, and image usages, 2002).
• Boys Don’t Cry - Kimberly Peirce (the feature film lists acknowledgment to Body Alchemy in film credits as Loren Cameron, 1999).
• 60 Minutes - Television news segment about artist’s exhibition/artist in residency at UC Santa Cruz, CA. 1998.
• You Don’t Know Dick: Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men - Northern Light Productions (documentary for film and television profiling artist, contracting photographic usages, 1997).
• TV Japan - Television news segment profiling artist and photographs 1997.
• Globo TV Brazil - Television news segment about artist with photo usages 1997.
• SBTV Brazil - Television news segment profiling artist, with photo usages 1997.
• The BBC Channel 4 - Television documentary segment about photographer with photos 1995.

Quotes

• "What was initially a crude documentation of my own personal journey quickly evolved into an impassioned mission. Impulsively, I began to photograph other transsexuals that I knew, feeling compelled to make images of their emotional and physical triumphs. I was fueled by my need to be validated and wanted, in turn, to validate them. I wanted the world to see us, I mean, really see us."

External links

• Online Alchemy, the art of Loren Cameron (official page)
• "Cuerpos Pintados- Loren Cameron Books