Cosplay In America, Volume 2

Description

A lush combination of portraiture and documentary photography, Cosplay in America, Volume 2 takes us on a tour of fan conventions across the nation from Comic-Con International in San Diego and Los Angeles’s Anime Expo to DragonCon in Atlanta and New York Comic Con in celebration of the pastime of cosplay. The act of dressing up as characters from manga, video games, and anime can require hundreds of hours of build time and painstaking attention to detail; and with five hundred cons per year in the United States and a dedicated community, the line between hobby and lifestyle blurs.

Ejen Chuang spent two years photographing people constructing costumes and gathering at events to model their efforts. Accompanying Chuang’s beautiful and deeply human images, cosplayers of all ages and backgrounds discuss their experiences of finding themselves while bringing fictional characters to life. Essays by Andrea Letamendi, PhD, and Liz Ohanesian deepen our understanding of this transformative subculture.