Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography

First edition, first printing. Soft cover. Photographically illustrated matt laminated wrappers. Essays by Jennifer Blessing, Carole-Anne Tyler, Sarah Wilson, Nancy Spector, Judith Halberstam and Lyle Ashton Harris. Photographic works by Janine Antoni, Matthew Barney, Cecil Beaton, Brassaï, Claude Cahun, Marcel Duchamp, Nan Goldin, Lyle Ashton Harris, Hannah Höch, Jürgen Klauke, George Platt Lynes, Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe, Christian Marclay, Annette Messager, Pierre Molinier, Yasumasa Morimura, Catherine Opie, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman, Katharina Sieverding, Inez van Lamsweerde, Andy Warhol and Madame Yevonde. Includes artists' biographies (with bibliographies), an index of reproductions and notes on the contributors. Designed by Bethany Johns Design, New York. 224 pp., with 156 color and black and white illustrations. 13 x 9-7/8 inches. Published on the occasion of the 1997 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. From the publisher: "This important volume, whose title combines Gertrude Stein's famous motto "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," with the name of Marcel Duchamp's feminine alter ego, Rrose Sélavy, features portraits, self-portraits and photomontages in which the gender of the subject is highlighted through performance for the camera or through technical manipulation of the image. In many of the works, photography's strong aura of realism and objectivity promotes a fantasy of total gender transformation. In other pieces, the photographic representation articulates an incongruity between the posing body and its assumed costume."