The French language will have to get used to it and get started. In one of the photos of the fascinating exhibition Queer photographs, by JJ Levine, presented at the McCord Museum, Harry is photographed seated on the ottoman of a living room, stroking with his hand his belly, where he is carrying a child. On his body, we notice the scars left by surgical interventions. At the top, an inscription “Harry pregnant”. The child that Harry is carrying, who will be found in the subsequent photos of everyday life, is also that of JJ Levine, the young photographer in his thirties who signs the exhibition.
Through his portrait galleries that showcase his close circle of friends, living mainly in Montreal, JJ Levine takes us into the queer universe that is his, while forcing us to question our own view of these realities. Master of the codes of traditional portrait photography, he shows both what artifice reveals and what it hides.
The exhibition offers three series of portraits: the first, where the pregnant Harry is, is entitled queer portraits. It was started in 2006 and the photographer still documents it today. The artist presents various members of his community, always through extremely careful presentations to which he devotes hours, even weeks. Women friends raising a child together, breastfeeding women, children of queer union stare at the camera, as if to better affirm their presence and their identity.
In an interview, JJ Levine tells the story of a photo showing his ex-spouse and his child, asleep side by side in the morning light. “I saw this scene and it touched me so much. It was in a cabin. Afterwards, I reproduced the scene and took forever to find a fabric of the exact color that the curtain had that morning,” he says.
The stereotypes
The other two series of the exhibition, more thematic, force the spectator to revise his gaze and the stereotypes about people.
In the series alone time (alone), the artist pretends to show us different couples in scenes of everyday life. However, a closer look reveals that a single model in fact holds the two roles successively, that of the woman and that of the man. It is only the clothes, make-up or attitudes that change. In one of these photos, which seems to represent a traditional couple, man and woman with a little girl and a little boy, it is in fact only two models, an adult and a child, who have taken all the poses.
In the third series, titled Switch (permutations), apparently heterosexual couples exchange roles, change their appearance with wigs, make-up and clothes, without it being possible to define, in the end, who is the man and who is the woman. JJ Levine himself identifies as trans, although he refuses to say what his “birth-assigned” gender was, as they say. In an interview, he explains that he tries, through his work, to change the image of trans people conveyed in the media, often through people who are not. “We always show people who are going through very difficult and very painful things. Me, I want to show that it’s very good to be trans, and that I have a good life. »
The exhibition will be accompanied by a whole series of activities on the theme of redefining gender. Hélène Samson, curator of the exhibition, will give a conference on queer art in the 19th century.and century on April 8. In an interview, she says that the portrait of a trans man was found in the archives of Canadian photographer William Notman, with the mention: “Do not insert in the catalog. »
JJ Levine exhibited his first photograph at the McCord Museum in 2008, during an exhibition created by emerging photographers in tribute to William Notman.
“JJ Levine presented a queer portrait there,” recalls Hélène Samson.