Loren Cameron
Encyclopedia
Loren Rex Cameron 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."
, 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.
, 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. He has also posed for photographers such as Daniel Nicoletta
.
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
. 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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and transsexual
Transsexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...
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."
Biography
Loren Rex Cameron was born in PasadenaPasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1959. He moved to rural Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
in 1969 after his mother's death, where he lived as a self-described tomboy
Tomboy
A tomboy is a girl who exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of the gender role of a boy, including the wearing of typically masculine-oriented clothes and engaging in games and activities that are often physical in nature, and which are considered in many cultures to be the...
on his father's farm. By the age of sixteen, Cameron identified both sexually and socially as a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
and encountered homophobic
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
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
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
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
Transitioning (transgender)
Transitioning is the process of changing one's gender presentation to accord with one's internal sense of one's gender - the idea of what it means to be a man or woman...
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 PortraitsBody Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits
Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits is a book collecting photographs and writing of Loren Cameron. It documents the process of transition and everyday lives of the author and other transmen.-The book:...
, documented Cameron's personal experience of transition
Transitioning (transgender)
Transitioning is the process of changing one's gender presentation to accord with one's internal sense of one's gender - the idea of what it means to be a man or woman...
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
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the 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
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Minneapolis, in Santiago, Chile
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in Mexico City, Mexico. They have been published in numerous books such as Transgender Warriors (Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg is a transgender queer and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.- Career :...
, 1996) and Constructing Masculinity: Discussions in Contemporary Culture (Routledge, 1995), as well as in various magazines. He has also posed for photographers such as Daniel Nicoletta
Daniel Nicoletta
Daniel Nicoletta is an American photographer, photo journalist and gay rights activist.-Biography:Born in New York City, Daniel Nicoletta was raised in Utica, NY. In his late teens he left New York to attend San Francisco State University, later graduating from the Bachelor of Arts program...
.
Cameron lectures throughout the United States at universities and other venues, including Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
, Harvard, Cornell, Brown
Brown
Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color....
, 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
Palais de Tokyo
The Palais de Tokyo is a building dedicated to modern and contemporary art, located at 13 avenue du Président-Wilson, near the Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The eastern wing of the building belongs the City of Paris and hosts the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. On television, he has been profiled on the Discovery Health Channel
Discovery Health Channel
Discovery Health Channel is a website owned by Discovery Communications, created for people interested in health and wellness. Until December 31, 2010, it was a U.S. cable television specialty channel dedicated to television programming that highlights various aspects of health and wellness...
's LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
-themed one-hour special Sex Change: Him to Her
Sex Change: Him to Her
Sex Change: Him to Her is a LGBT one-hour television special from Discovery Health Channel. The special interviewed four transsexuals who changed their gender/sex through a combination of sex reassignment surgery and/or hormone replacement therapy, and a change of lifestyle and habit...
, on the National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...
's "Taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
" Sexual Identity
Sexual identity
Sexual identity is a term that, like sex, has two distinctively different meanings. One describes an identity roughly based on sexual orientation, the other an identity based on sexual characteristics, which is not socially based but based on biology, a concept related to, but different from,...
" series. He has also been interviewed in the magazine, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. 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 PortraitsBody Alchemy: Transsexual PortraitsBody Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits is a book collecting photographs and writing of Loren Cameron. It documents the process of transition and everyday lives of the author and other transmen.-The book:...
. 1996, Cleis PressCleis PressCleis Press is an independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, later moved to San Francisco, and is now based out of Berkeley, CA...
. 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 AwardLambda Literary AwardLambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the 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
Selected filmography
Film and Television (a partial list)- TabooTaboo (TV series)Taboo is a documentary television series that premiered in 2002 on the National Geographic Channel. The program is an educational look into "taboo" rituals and traditions practiced in some societies, yet forbidden and illegal in others....
- "Sexual Identity", Beyond Productions Inc. for National Geographic Channel (documentary profiling artist in segment, including image usages, 2006). - Boy I Am - Samantha Feder Productions (documentary profiling Body Alchemy, and photo usages, 2006).
- Sex ChangesSex Change: Him to HerSex Change: Him to Her is a LGBT one-hour television special from Discovery Health Channel. The special interviewed four transsexuals who changed their gender/sex through a combination of sex reassignment surgery and/or hormone replacement therapy, and a change of lifestyle and habit...
- 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 CryBoys Don't Cry (film)Boys Don't Cry is a 1999 American independent romantic drama film directed by Kimberly Peirce and co-written by Andy Bienen. The film is a dramatization of the real-life story of Brandon Teena, a transgender man played by Hilary Swank, who pursues a relationship with a young woman, played by Chloë...
- Kimberly PeirceKimberly PeirceKimberly Peirce is an American feature film director, notable for her debut feature film, Boys Don't Cry . Her second feature, Stop-Loss, was released by Paramount Pictures in 2008.- Early life and career :...
(the feature film lists acknowledgment to Body Alchemy in film credits as Loren Cameron, 1999). - 60 Minutes60 Minutes60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
- 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."