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About the Book:
In his final—and most personal—work to date, photographer Carlos Batts explores the often stigmatized world of the “fat girl” in his fourth published collection of photographs with wife, award-winning adult film actress and plus-size model, April Flores. Featuring new and intimate photographs (including Flores’ highly mythologized early “blonde” Polaroids never-before-seen), Fat Girl (Rare Bird Books, 2013) captures an exquisite perspective unique to the celebrated “culture of beauty.”
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Author Bio:
Carlos Batts is an award-winning artist, photographer, and director. His artwork has appeared on book covers (Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk, Random House UK), fashion magazines (VIBE, Complex, Maxim, and WARP Japan), music videos, and comic books (DC Comics/Vertigo).
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Miss Rosen’s Contribution:
Fat Girl includes an introduction by Miss Rosen.
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Excerpt from the Introduction:
Sugar and spice and all things nice like glitter and sparkle and shiny objects, lip gloss and candy-colored purses with matching shoes and perfume that smells like spring, like flowers in bloom. All things femme, feminine, sexy, sex, lots of it, like seconds and thirds and even fourths. A way of being, of flowing, of feeling, a vibration that is sweet and juicy like a bowl of mixed berries over cherry vanilla ice cream. And it keeps going, glowing, the way that April Flores overflows with energy, a feeling and beauty that goes so deep below so you know it’s love. True Love. Self Love. One Love… because that’s all that it ever is, especially when you bring another person into the mix.
This is where Fat Girl begins: Before the lens of photographer Carlos Batts back in June 2000. On her way to their very first shoot, April stopped dead in her tracks. She stood on the landing of the stairs between the second and third floors of Batts’ building. And it was here that she was hit with a message: If she continues forward, her life will change forever.
“I decided ‘Fuck it. Let’s see what happens,’” April says.
Because Fat Girl was always going to happen; the inevitable does not need a plan. It just goes with the flow and the next thing you know a dozen years have passed and hundreds if not thousands of photographs have amassed. Memories, some cherished, others forgotten, others completely questionable like, When did we do this? I can’t remember a thing.
—Miss Rosen
Brooklyn, 2013
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Photographs ©Carlos Batts
Book cover courtesy of Rare Bird Books