Laurie and Debbie say:

We had a such wonderful response to last year’s holiday sale of Laurie’s books of photography (with Debbie’s text), that we thought we’d offer the same price again this year. It means a lot to us that Nudes for the Holidays pleased so many people.

Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes

and Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes

Signed copies (which Laurie can personalize for you as gifts) of each are on sale for $15 including U.S. shipping: a great bargain given that each book is usually available for $25 plus shipping! (International shipping is $10 per book.)

There are two great things about doing art that is also social change work: the art and the social change. Laurie never dreamed when we started this project that her photographs would be internationally exhibited and become part of permanent museum collections.

The social change aspects make the best stories. We’ve heard about women who’ve thrown away their entire wardrobe and bought a new one after looking at the pictures, or bought a bathing suit for the first time in years.

We watched a man who had been a porn model burst into tears at a slide show, just at the concept that there could be nudes of men who didn’t have to look perfect.

It’s no exaggeration: these photographs, and these books, change lives. Buying them for yourselves is terrific; giving them to the right someone else can start a cascade of exactly the kind of changes we all want to see.

In the early days of Women En Large, the pictures, plus a long talk with Laurie which would never have happened without the pictures, helped a woman recover from active, life-limiting anorexia. When the Familiar Men pictures were shown in at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, one of the workmen on staff at the museum wrote the senior curator to say how much the pictures changed how he felt about himself, and how important that was to him.

And just last week Laurie got an email from a man who is dealing with surgical disfigurement, who said that Familiar Men had completely changed the way he feels about his body.

These books are the tangible markers of our work together. Our goals are to make the invisible visible, to widen the range of what is beautiful and what is powerful, and to help change the way people see. Buying the books gets the images out into the world where they can do good, and also supports our work; in particular, giving it to someone you think is beautiful but they don’t think so is a perfect way to show them what you see in them. At the same time, book sales help us maintain the blog, seed new projects for Laurie, and pay the bills.

Isn’t there someone you know who needs a copy? Or several someones?

Tell your friends.