This book, published on the occasion of an exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum, presents photographically based artworks - portraits, self-portraits, and photomontagesin which the gender of the subjects is highlighted through performance for the camera as well as through technical manipulation of the image. In many of the works, photography's strong aura of realism and objectivity promotes a fantasy of total gender transformation.

In other pieces, the photographic representation articulates an incongruity between the posing body and its assumed costume.

Among the photographers represented are Cecil Beaton, Brassai, Claude Cahun, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hoch, George Platt Lynes, Man Ray, and Madame Yevonde (all of whom were active between 1920 and 1940) and, working after 1968, Janine Antoni, Matthew Barney, Nan Goldin, Lyle Ashton Harris, Jurgen Klauke, Robert Mapplethorpe, Christian Marclay, Annette Messager, Pierre Molinier, Yasumasa Morimura, Catherine Opie, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman, Katharina Sieverding, Inez van Lamsweerde, and Andy Warhol.