Lotus documents the world of transsexuals (kathoey) in Thailand through a lens that challenges the “fly-on-the-wall” objectivity of traditional documentary photography. Pinckers and De Bruyn utilize deliberate staging and artificial lighting to transform their subjects into a visual metaphor for the identity crisis facing contemporary documentary work. The book features a light blue cotton cover and unique yellow fold-out pages containing raw, spontaneous images taken with disposable cameras distributed to the subjects, providing a meta-narrative that demystifies the artistic process.
