Peggy Sirota

The list of celebrities who have sat for New York-based photographer reads like a Who's Who in American show business. Sirota's works is highly distinctive, her approach unconventional, and she has an extremely intense relationship to her subjects. In fact, it is Sirota's autodidactic style, perhaps, which lies at the heart of her success. Many of these photos, originally published under the title Guess Who, are part of a series of enigmatic and misleading portraits of celebrities. By disguising faces that are otherwise immediately recognizable, Sirota raises questions about the genre of celebrity portraiture, and allows us to look beyond the glamorous surface and into the person within. In addition, this volume includes many of Sirota's intriguing investigative and landscape photographs. All of the works have one thing in common: They cross borders, flirt with visual puns and allow the viewer a revealing glimpse behind the facade.