Jose A. Guzman Colon on 'Glam Gender'

A labor of love, a portrait of family, a vision of San Francisco's drag queens, drag kings, dancers, and musicians; Marianne Larochelle and Jose A. Guzman Colon's gorgeously realized coffee table book Glam Gender is all of that, and more. Larochelle served as photographer, and Guzman Colon as art director for the book, but as Guzman Colon tells EDGE, the book--and the process that led to its creation, from conceptualizing the look of the performers, to choosing the right color for the prints, to a hands-on selection of the materials and printing that went into the book's final production--was a matter of collaboration.

Guidance from Beyond

Guzman Colon suggests that not all of the parties involved were still here on this earthly plane. Explaining the book's origins, he tells EDGE about his closest friend of twenty years, Sara, who passed away a few years ago. Before she died, Sara wrote a letter to Guzman Colon, urging him, he says, "to pursue my creative dream, and if I couldn't do it on my own, to find somebody. Someone would be put into my life."

As though in fulfillment of Sara's directive, someone did indeed come into Guzman Colon's life. Some time after that tragic turn of events, Guzman Colon was talking with a friend of a friend, and describing his yearning for permanence. "I was so sick of so many wonderful friends and creative people from all walks of life in my life," Guzman Colon told EDGE. "I feel like the fade away--they die, they move away. I wanted to capture this." The young woman with whom Guzman Colon was speaking told him that he should meet Marianne Larochelle.

When Guzman Colon and Larochelle did meet, he thought for a moment--when he first glimpsed her--that she was his dear friend Sara. "Right there, we just clicked, and the magic began." The two bonded quickly, and their joint ventures into portraiture led to the book.

Co-Creators

"I wanted to capture a time and place, especially with just losing a great love of my life. I just wanted it to be kind of haunting, the image," Guzman Colon says, describing how during one early shoot, a reflection in a window behind the subject seemed to resemble a woman.

As time went on and the two co-creators continued to work, they realized that the work they were creating was amounting to more than a random collection or a gallery opening; they had a nascent book on their hands. Larochelle moved to Montreal, but their creative connection only flourished.

Though Guzman Colon is credited as art director for the book, and Larochelle as photographer, the two worked more as a team. "There's no her or I. It's we. I would like to say that I brought her into my worked, but she partnershipped with me into this world of what I do; together, we contacted queens," Guzman Colon says. "We wanted to capture them in some kind of 'glam gender' mode, and pull the best of something out of each one, and surprise them. Even if most of these people have been photographed numerous times, they have only been shot as [that for which] they [are] known. To take this wonderful group of people and push them--it's like magic, it's really cool."

Personalities and Chance

"There always has to be a collaboration, no matter who you're working with," Guzman Colon tells EDGE. "A lot of these people I have been styling, and have worked with them before, so I know about their wardrobe and what they are willing to do. It's just a craziness in my head; they allow me to just get in there, and create."

The photography is just the beginning, though. Adds Guzman Colon, "Marianne and I took each other on such an amazing journey--to develop these photos, to look through each of them individually, and to connect. Out of a hundred photos, there are maybe ten that are just beyond words, and then we have to bring it down to just one, or two, and go from there."

Planning may enter the equation, but not necessarily at the outset: though Guzman Colon had ideas about how to showcase and style the personalities he was working with, he remained open to chance and serendipity. "Adrian Roberts is in a pond-that thing is just full of fish and weird things," Guzman Colon says of one portrait included in the book. "We had another idea for her, but this was just so perfectly peaceful." It was also perfectly random; says Guzman Colon, "It was just in the back of this guy's house."

Other portraits required no small amount of preparation, and not just when it came to the styling. "For the picture of Heklina, I had to build that brick wall," Guzman Colon tells EDGE. "Those are real bricks! A lot of these [sets used in the book] were [custom made]," he adds. "It really is [a matter of] incorporating my love of San Francisco, my friends' houses, my friends, people, places, and things.

’Kick Back and Relax!’

"There's a real great, crazy image of Mad Magda, who used to have Mad Magda's Caf� in Hayes Valley. We actually shot her at the Regency Center, which used to be a theater on Van Ness and Sutter. There are three of four backdrops behind her. Those were hand-painted, from the early 1900s. The lighting that we did for that was so intricate, there are so many different layers and shadows.

"There's Peaches Christ, she's on the cover; the reason she was chosen to be on the cover is there's a feeling of, 'Kick back, relax, you're about to see something amazing happen.' Also, she's a film director, a writer, she managed the Bridge Theater--it's just cool to capture her in an old theater here in San Francisco.

Absent Friends

"We also have our friend Steven Price, who is somebody who just passed away," Guzman Colon continues. The death of Price, who appears as Steve Lady in the book, was "devastating," Guzman Colon says, but the man himself was "inspiring--he was such a great friend. Right around the time we shot him, he found out that he first got cancer. He was young, too--just an amazing artist. He was a stylist. Just a stunning man, like a supermodel, stunning in and out of drag. He was legendary in the San Francisco performance community.

Text and Photos

"Then we have Sister Roma, which is, to me, such a gorgeous, spiritual, gay religious icon," Guzman Colon says, adding, "Tonya Silver did the fantastic behind the scenes images." Of the final result, Guzman Colon tells EDGE, "I am proud of every single image in [the book], and I have emotional attachment to each of them."

The accompanying text matches the vibe of each photo. For the writing, Guzman Colon says, "We were really blessed to have Bill Picture. It's just genius, I love what he did." Guzman Colon approached Picture about the project with the idea that Picture's text would enhance the images, creating one unique and unforgettable offering. " 'This book is going to be around for the rest of our lives, so it has to feel iconic and legendary,' " Guzman Colon recollects saying to the writer. " 'This is your legacy. What legacy do you want to leave behind?' I wanted to know about about the models, and something kind of inspiring and silly, to leave the reader wanting to go back to that page, to look at the image or read the text over and over."

Adds Guzman Colon, "I pretty much asked everybody that I know [to play a part in creating this book], and the people who were available showed up. Whoever's in the book is supposed to be in the book. It's a family, hundreds and hundreds of people that I've known and loved in San Francisco. I've been here for 13 years."

Family Album

In other words, Glam Gender is as much family photo album as it is a celebration of San Francisco's drag and performance community. "Oh, yeah!" Guzman Colon agrees enthusiastically. "And the beautiful thing is that Marianne came along with me. We're in it for the love of creativity and art, and to inspire others; to make more. It never stops. I feel that... and I know she feels this way too... when we're apart, we still do what we do, but there's something magical when we're together."

Indeed, Guzman Colon already had plans to travel to Montreal to join Larochelle, both to promote Glam Gender and to start laying plans for their next collaboration. Guzman Colon is clearly bursting with excitement for the new project--though he's also keen to keep details to a minimum. "As of now, we're calling it the Black and White Series," Guzman Colon tells EDGE. "You're just going to have to wait and see, because it's not going to be as black and white as you think it is!"

But will it be another "family album" in the mode of Glam Gender? "It'll always be a family album!" Guzman Colon declares. "Our models are people who are real. They may be sparkly, and do really amazing things but they are real people who represent a light and a love. I would be so... I don't want to be melodramatic and say I'd be dead without all these people my life, but I just feel that they bring so much life and lightness."