dr.a.g. by Christopher Logan

Last Spring I had the great pleasure of getting an advance look at dr.a.g. from Christopher Logan, chatting with him about it, and featuring it in an issue of Frock Magazine. Unfortunately, by the time we went to print, the parent company of the original publisher went into bankruptcy, which meant the book was no longer available.

Well, here we are, a little more than a year later, and a new edition of the dr.a.g. book has been published by Logan’s company bookthefilm, and enhanced with additional material from Acid Betty, Yara Sofia, and Queen Bee Ho.

Produced by Christopher Logan, dr.a.g. is a coffee table book featuring some of the world’s top drag performers, as captured by a wide array of fashion and celebrity photographers. It’s a project where everyone involved donated their time, all to help to raise funds for a movie on the subject of . . . yup, you guessed it, drag! From the New York drag scene to the Vegas Strip, from the streets of Montreal to the cast of RuPaul's Drag Race, dr.a.g. features such notable faces as Lady Bunny, Frank Marino, Nina Flowers, Miss Coco Peru, and others.

Christopher Logan, the man behind the book, is an actor whose credits include Connie and Carla, Saving Silverman, Tron Legacy, and Alcatraz. Born in Ottawa, he moved to Vancouver after training at The Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Hollywood. He got into producing books after writing a novel as a gift for a friend (Daphne, a children’s book about penguins, the last magical creatures of the Earth), and moved on to producing events and books to raise funding for independent film production.

Although primarily a photographic collection, the book begins with a recap of the historical origins of dr.a.g (dressed as a girl) and dr.a.b. (dressed as a boy) - originating with the old British farces, where men would flop and drag their dresses around the stage, camping it up in high-pitched voices in a sort of mockery of women. The terms later evolved through an underground dialect called Polari, a sort of gay slang in the United Kingdom with its origins in travelling Gypsy, into drag queen.

dr.a.g. is an absolutely gorgeous book all on its own, but there’s a larger purpose behind it. The hope is to produce a drag movie that is as beautiful, as respectful, and as uplifting as the book. There's a great range of styles represented within the book, from campy to elegant, and from funny to gorgeous, representing the diversity within the drag world itself.

Reviewed by Sally