Rob Lebow/Masha Kupets: Gorgeous

What happens if you take popular drag culture and pimp it up with "glamour, glamour, glamour"? Photographer Rob Lebow and Creative Director Masha Kupets have tried and the result is Gorgeous, a 'coffee table photography book' aimed to be released in 2014. Gorgeous will feature several well-known US-American artists from the LGBTQ scene, or as Lebow puts it: "It will include the entire LGBTQ spectrum: androgyny, drag queens, drag kings, gender benders, trans, plus a few surprises for shock and awe", all glammed up for spectacular portrait shots, their personal stories added in text form. According to its makers, the book is an attempt to celebrate the culture, and at the same time to educate about non-binary gender expression and challenge gender norms.
The mainstream fascination with drag culture is nothing new - think of La Cage Aux Folles from the 1970s, Priscilla, The Queen of the Desert from the 1990s, or RuPaul's ever so popular Drag Race. While the gay website Queerty assumes that the topic might be "challenging or unfamiliar to a lot of people", I'd argue that most people have seen and are not too fussed with a drag queen here and there. By nature it is fun and exciting on the surface, and deep at its best and tragic at its worst underneath. It has a history - after all, the Stonewall riots in 1969 were led by transvestites and trans people - and it has its own, brilliant, successful way of answering problems such as gender dysphoria, homophobia or transphobia. But most of all, it is so outspoken, so flamboyant, such a feast for the eye and the mind alike that it deserves to be celebrated.
I believe that Lebow and Kupets do not really need the slightly superficial educational approach which they repeat in empty phrases in their interviews over and over. Gorgeous has all the potential to be, well, gorgeous the way it is. The portraits are stunning, echoing great photographers such as Richard Avedon and playing on old-school Hollywood glamour in their simplistic, straight-forward, studio style. They are celebrating the diversity indeed, by capturing the great personas of the subjects, reverberating the vibes, the pride, the playfulness in simple and always beautiful black and white.

Cake Moss 

The Kickstarter for the project just failed to raise the required funding. The Gorgeous Project is not giving up, though. I'd love to see it succeed, because these pictures are so great to look at, they deserve a bit of good paper and nice printing. Maybe a good book will actually help the matter, and promote progressive gender conceptions, just by being lovely and approachable - a little bit of iconic glamour never hurts, and if there's one thing you can say about drag artists, they never fail to stand their ground.

Ernie Omega