You've seen a million photos of cosplayers packing conventions like San Diego Comic Con and Dragon Con. All the most popular characters invariably show up, like Harley and Boba Fett and Deadpool. So many Deadpools. What you don't often see is the painstaking craft and preparation these people go through to so thoroughly and convincingly assume these roles.
Photographer Ejen Chuang followed some particularly devoted cosplayers in his book Cosplayers in America v2. It’s a heartwarming peek into their world, one inhabited by people too often, and too easily, dismissed as geeks or nerds. "I just wanted to show that these are ordinary people,” Chuang says. “They have interesting lives. They’re not anything out of the ordinary."
Chuang has always had an affinity for their world. Growing up, he was a huge fan of X-Men and Spiderman, watched a lot of anime, and dragged his dad to a few conventions. He put all of that aside when he went off to college, then returned to it in 2008 when an ad for the Anime Expo in LA caught his eye. He decided to check it out, made some portraits of the people he met, and realized he'd returned home. “I was really amazed at how geekdom, or fandom, had united all these people,” he says. “I saw everybody and I felt like, why can’t the world be like this?”
That experience inspired Cosplayers in America, a book full of cosplay convention portraits. As with all things in comics and blockbuster franchises, a sequel seemed inevitable. Chuang decided to explore the lives of cosplayers before they don the costumes and makeup. “I felt that cosplay wasn’t totally represented the way you see it at the ground level,” he says. “You don’t see the behind the scenes, what people are actually doing at home.”
The projects took him to 20 cities and 15 conventions across the country, including San Diego Comic Con and Dragon Con in Atlanta. He creates a Facebook group for big events, and asks interested cosplayers if he can photograph them at home. If they agree, he turns up about a week before an event to follow them as they prepare for the big day.
Chuang follows them as they shop for costume material in fabric shops, thrift stores and junkyards, often with reference materials to make sure they get it just right. Some spend a few dollars, while others shell out thousands. Back home, they cut fabric, dye wigs, and painstakingly stitch their costumes together. Then they accessorize. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months nail the look.
The day before a convention—aka #DayZero—cosplayers often work into the 11th hour getting ready. Some have streaming parties so they can chat with friends as they work, while others pull solo all-nighters and binge on Netflix. “Sometimes I wonder why they don't start earlier,” Chuang says. “And no, not everyone waits till the last minute, but I feel for some it is part of the process—similar to that frantic high you get when cramming for finals the night before.”
Convention Day starts bright and early, as getting into character can take hours. Chuang hustled from one hotel room to another to photograph everyone as they prepared. Then it was off to the convention center for portraits and candids, followed by parties that went into the wee hours.
It was perhaps inevitable that Chuang would become a cosplayer himself. He typically gets into the spirit of things for conventions, often going as Satan from Devil Is a Part-Timer!, an anime series in which Beezlebub works at a fast food joint called MgRonald's. "When I first started I did not expect to get involved in the culture," Chuang says. "After a while, it was just like, 'Eh, it doesn't matter what other people think. I'm pretty happy doing this.'"
