The First Transgender Photobook, Inscribed to 'Teriyaki the Great'
Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them.
New York: Dutton, 1989.
Price: $500.00
About the item
First edition, first printing. Illustrated. Folio. Pink paper and cloth boards. Fine in price clipped dust jacket, otherwise fine. "Voices from the Collections: Photographer Mariette Pathy Allen in Conversation with Curator Makeda Best" Harvard Art Museums, 2021.
Item #372506
Inscribed to "Teriyaki the Great / Thanks for your friendship over the years. Much love, Mariette."
In 1978 Allen first met a trans woman, Vicky West, who invited her to Fantasia Fair, a transgender conference for which she eventually worked as the official photographer. She quickly became politicized and regularly attended conferences around gender identity, both as photographer and as presenter, and worked for Transgender Tapestry magazine. Transformations collects her photos of "male-to-female crossdressers" with their families in the years 1978-1989, as well as their stories
When Transformations was published, it "was often placed in a bookstore behind a cashier on a high shelf, which kept people from buying it. Customers wouldn’t ask for it, because they didn’t want the cashier to suspect they were a crossdresser. A cashier told me it was the kind of book that 'walks' (that is, stolen)."
The trans community responded positively to her work, which was a sharp contrast to the sensationalist, fetishist, or medicalist portrayals that could be found in publications at the time. Allen reported that after the book was published, "many people felt joy and relief to finally have a book that they could use to show who they were to their families, friends, and the outside world. I was told that the book saved marriages, and even lives."
