~~February 2, 2014~~

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.”

From the age of 16, Cameron was sexually and socially identifying as a lesbian. It was in 1987 that Cameron began his transition from female to male. He began his photography career in 1993 as he documented his process of becoming a man. As Cameron began to take pictures of his own transformation, he began to photograph other transsexuals.

His work includes portraiture and self-portraiture which consist of lesbian and transsexual bodies. Heralded as groundbreaking and stunning, his book Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits has been regarded as a seminal contribution. It has been critically acclaimed worldwide and in 1996 received numerous certificates of recognition, including two Lambda Literary awards.

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.

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. 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 photographic project focuses on the sexuality of gay FTMs.

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

Quote

“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.”

~~Sources/Related Articles~~

http://futurescopes.com/transgender/10440/10-men-who-were-born-female

http://www.oddee.com/item_98038.aspx

http://fecktv.tumblr.com/post/49604120534/just-published-on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Cameron?action=render

http://genderoutlaw.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/body-alchemy-transsexual-portraits-by-loren-cameron/

BODY ALCHEMY: TRANSSEXUAL PORTRAITS
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.Loren makes a fascinating subject. In some of the shots he seems fierce, projecting determination and anger. He admits to the anger that rises so easily as a result of the testosterone injections, of more frequent fights, of the struggle to contain the beast within. He writes engagingly of his relationships and feelings, and left me wanting more. He avoids self-indulgence, instead showing the many faces of a whole, healthy person.

Full read/Full Credit for this section: http://www.gendertalk.com/articles/oped/bodyalch.shtml

~~Loren Rex Cameron is not the only one~~

This is a reality which occurs more frequently that we think. It may be now that is discussed as openly as you see here.

Still the stigma of this “condition” continues unabated.

Here is a video and list of world famous men who were born female.

World Famous Men, who were born as female

~~Published on Oct 2, 2012~~

~World Famous Men who born as female~

~~Balian Buschbaum~~

Balian Buschbaum was born in 1980 as Yvonne Buschbaum, and he is a former German pole vaulter. Though he was the second best female pole vaulter in Germany, in 2007 Buschbaum announced his retirement due to a persistent injury. He also expressed his desire to begin gender reassignment therapy. In 2008 he officially changed his name and underwent gender reassignment surgery to become a man.

~~Buck Angel~~

Adult film maker and transsexual Buck Angel is an icon in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community. Buck was the 2007 winner of the Adult Video News Award “Transsexual Performer of the Year”. He currently works as an advocate, educator, lecturer and writer, and runs his own production company.

~~Loren Cameron~~

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; he documented his own physiological transition from female to male. 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.”

~~Ian Harvie~~

American Ian Harvie is a stand-up comedian who often uses his transsexuality as material in his act. He has performed with Margaret Cho and many other notable celebrities and is a well-known fixture in the LGBT pop culture community

~~Lucas Silveira~~

Born in Canada in 1979, Lucas Silveira made history being the first openly-trans man to be in a rock band which was signed by a major record label. Silveira is a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter for The Cliks, he has also released a new solo album which is available now.

~~Katastrophe~~

Rocco Kayiatos is known as Katastrophe, an American hip-hop rapper and producer. Kayiatos is widely credited as the first openly transgender singer in the hip-hop genre.

~~Thomas Beatie~~

Thomas Beatie gained international attention for being the one of the world’s most visible “pregnant” men. Born female, Beatie lived his life as a woman until his mid-twenties. He then began taking male hormone therapy but decided to retain his female sex organs so that he and his wife, who could not conceive herself, could have children together using donor sperm. Beatie has since had three children and is back on his male hormones.

~~Ryan Sallans~~

Ryan Sallans was born as Kimberly Ann Sallans, and he is now a LGBT rights advocate and public speaker who travels the U.S. to educate people about transgender issues and changes to the health care system. He underwent his transformation from female to male over the course of several years and completed his transition in 2005. Sallans has been featured on “Larry King Live!” and the LOGO channel, as well as countless magazines and other publications.

~~Andreas Krieger~~

Andreas Krieger was a German shot putter who competed as a woman on the East German athletics team. From his early teens he was given anabolic steroids without his knowledge, which lead him to become more and more masculine in appearance and attitude. Krieger retired from the sport in 1990 and underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1997, and he has publicly said that he wishes he hadn’t been drugged so that he could have discovered for himself what his gender preference was

~~Chaz Bono~~

Chaz Bono was born Chastity Bono, the daughter of famous American performers Sonny and Cher. Raised in the public eye, Chastity came out as a lesbian when she was 25 before realizing that she was actually a transgender. Chaz underwent a sex change operation over the course of two years and is now happily living his life as a man. Chaz went on to be a contestant on the hit television show, Dancing With The Stars.