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 XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits is exactly that: stunning photographs of 30 porn stars-gay and straight, male and female, newcomers to the business and well-seasoned performers-each captured clothed and naked. That makes for a total of 60 portraits, if you're counting.Greenfield-Sanders is a well established portraitist, having shot presidents and pop stars, artists and actors, writers and world leaders. Here, his unblinking lens brings the souls of a group of people ordinarily left far out of the mainstream, right into our living rooms. They're wrapped in a whole new package, one that invites depth and discovery as opposed to mere Pavlovian arousal. Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy are probably today's two most famous porn stars and they are included in the book (in egalitarian alphabetical order). They both appear completely comfortable in their skin-and their clothing. The juxtaposition of nude and clothed photos is interesting, allowing you to compare and contrast. The look on each person's face and the pose they've chosen to strike is also interesting, and searching their expressions for small, telling differences becomes almost a game. Obviously these are people who are naked for a living and well acquainted with the camera's lens. But here, when they are the subject, as opposed to having Sex as the subject, many appear uneasy. Oddly, while some appear more relaxed naked, others seem more "themselves" in clothes. Perhaps even more enlightening than the portraits themselves are the less formal photographs of the subjects at the back of the book and the personal words that accompany them. While the writers receive stock bios, the porn stars get to explain themselves in their own words. The text ranges from boilerplate press releases to soul-baring confessionals, and each is a glimpse at the person behind the sultry pose or confrontational gaze. Reading about their personal lives gives their portraits even more dimension and provides a better context for why they have chosen this particular vocation. They are like living, breathing Rorschach tests.  Between the lovely, large format photos, the book is sprinkled with written pieces about porn (quite generally speaking) written by a collection of cultural icons. The discourse is simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking. Gore Vidal's introduction meanders from historical references to flat-out sexist sociological assumptions. Lou Reed's piece is a hilarious regurgitation of a million email spam messages, those siren's calls to "click here" for a bigger penis, lusty farm girls or HOT TEEN BABES!From first person experiences with adult material such as John Malkovich's Discovering Porn to Salman Rushdie's treatise on the global influence of the porn industry, The East Is Blue, this book inspires some of America's most prominent literary and cultural thinkers to expound on one of our most profitable AND controversial "industries." The interviews-between Nancy Friday and Nina Hartley, John Waters and Chi Chi La Rue, Francine du Plessix Gray and Simon Dumenco-offer a more conversational window into our current thoughts about what porn means to us as sexual beings, as simple consumers and as Americans. Taken in as a whole, these essays touch on the many conflicting emotions inspired by pornography. You can purchase the book at www.amazon.com or at your local bookstore. XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits is published by Bulfinch Press. You can see more of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders work at www.greenfield-sanders.com.
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