Montrealer interrogates traditional gender roles through portrait series

A series of photography work at the McCord Museum invites viewers to question traditional gender roles through scenes that feel both intimate and distant.

JJ Levine: Queer Photographs at the museum in downtown Montreal features work from three separate projects: Queer Portraits, Alone Time and Switch. In all three, photographer JJ Levine uses portraits to lead viewers out of their comfort zone and away from their assumptions.

Levine says that not giving clues about who is in a photo is foundational to his work's message: It's up to an individual to decide how much of their gender identity they wish to disclose.

"There's an urge for the reveal, or desire for what's going on behind someone's clothes. I want to emphasize the fact that there is no truth," Levine said.

The portraits open up pathways for viewers to reconsider the gendered assumptions that undergird their own lives, as well as expectations of access to queer and trans bodies.

Levine's portraiture is heavily informed by his own experiences as a queer and trans person who is regularly thinking about gender perception and identity.

In the exhibition, viewers look upon scenes of intimacy and care without knowing anything other than the names of the people in the portrait, the year it was taken and the carefully curated environment in which they're photographed.

He says the portraits came about naturally, from his relationships with friends, family and lovers over the course of a decade.

The people and items are shot on film and rearranged and collaged together. He says this gives the portraits both a formal and theatrical feel, without satisfying "that desire to see all in someone's life."

Hannah Happeney, viewing the exhibition for the first time, said what she enjoyed most was this interplay of proximity and space between the viewer and subject.

"I feel like I'm sitting in this person's home with them, and getting to know them a little bit," Happeney said.

Each project interrogates normative ideas of gender identity in its own way. Queer Portraits features serious, large-scale photographs of models, usually in their own homes; Alone Time presents photographs of heterosexual couples, with one model playing both members of the couple and Switch shows studio portraits of heterosexual couples — each staged as both the man and woman in a pair of photographs.

Exhibition-goer Jeanne Goudreault-Martoux said the portraits offered visitors "a window in their life."

This is purposefully only a window, though.

Levine says that while the exhibition gives viewers a privileged vantage point, ultimately "other people's bodies are nobody's business."