Going to extremes - but will it ever be beauty?

A shocking book on extreme cosmetic surgery shows how far some people are willing to go to in order to modify their looks, writes Noelle McCarthy

ARCHETYPES, aliens, eunuchs, cats. The subjects of Philip Toledano’s new book remind you of many things but not people, necessarily. Not people in any normal sense of the word anyway. This is perhaps the point of his project.

In his book, A New Kind of Beauty, the American photographer looks at the aging process and human mortality. It is a portfolio of images of men and women who have had cosmetic surgery. And not just a little cosmetic surgery. These are not people who have had a discreet brow-lift, or a tidy-up tummy tuck. Rather, they’ve submitted to the sort of surgery that changes your appearance radically. The sort of surgery that leaves you with a face like Joan Rivers, or a siamese cat. The sort of surgery that gives you breasts as big as your head.