Byron Newman - The Ultimate Angels

Publisher: Hutchinson
Year: 1984
Format: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: Like New
Pages: 112
Size: 29 x 21 cm

"One night in Paris, I asked a transgender sex-worker how she would describe herself. 'As the Ultimate Angel' she replied, and she was right."

First edition of British glamor photographer Byron Newman’s portfolio of trans and gender nonconforming sex workers in Paris. A regular contributor to Lui and Playboy, Newman moved Paris in 1977 to work as an art director for Mode International and live with his muse and wife, French actress Brigitte Ariel. While in the city's red light districts of Bois de Boulogne and Pigalle, he and Ariel befriended transgender sex workers who frequented the area, most of them originally from Brazil. Over the course of two months, Newman documented women from the community, providing a clandestine look into their lives on the streets, in night clubs, brothels, and apartments, with johns, and more.

Inspired by the work of Brassai in the 1930s, the book was also the product of Newman’s desire to capture the women both realistically and positively as the community had previously only been documented as criminal in Parisian weekly newspapers, and includes a compassionate introduction written by Ariel. In 2017, interest in the project was renewed when Newman and painter Aphrodite Papadatou collaborated on an exhibition presenting the photos for the first time to the public.