The Queens

All of the people photographed in this book—with no exception—are men. They are transvestites or, in the language of their cultural underworld, "queens' They are men who are more comfortable in drag than in denims, men who think of themselves as women.
The nine sequences which comprise George Alpert's photographic essay capture the transformation of ten such men into sometimes bizarre, sometimes hauntingly beautiful women. Theirs is a world of make-up and wigs, of glitter and fashion, of gay clubs and well-cruised streets.
The result is these startling portraits of ten men as they want to be seen, who, through Alpert's sensitive eye, have the pathos and the dignity, the naturalness and wry humor which characterizes the special domain inhabited by the Queens.
George Alpert has been described by Norman Rothschild in Popular Photography as one of America's master photographers. Director of the Soho Gallery in New York, Alpert has been exhibited by almost every major photography gallery in the New York City Area, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, and Il Diaframma gallery in Milan.