Edition 2019
LA CASTIGLIONE GALLERY, MONTREAL, CANADA
JJ LEVINE
FAMILY
I have spent the past ten years photographing my relationships with my friends, lovers, and siblings in my LGBTQ community in Montreal. Each portrait is taken in a different domestic setting, characterized by saturated colours, and discursive backgrounds. Using professional lighting and a medium or large format film camera, I create a studio within each home environment, and intentionally place every object that appears within the frame. These settings are intended to raise questions regarding private space as a realm for the development of community and the expression of genders and sexualities that are often marginalized within the public sphere. As my LGBTQ community of friends has entered a new phase of life, now mostly in our thirties, several of us have started to have children. My images have followed alongside this trajectory, and I have begun to document the ways in which children fit into and shift our lives and realities.
JJ Levine
JJ Levine