One Person, Two Genders

[JesusA (imported)]

The Montreal-based photographer JJ Levine (http://jjlevine.ca/) has been photographing the trans and queer communities since 2006. His portraiture work includes series that are personal and intimate and others that challenge the ways in which sexuality and the gender binary play out in contemporary society.

For the series “Alone Time,” Levine recreated and photographed typical domestic environments that play with gender stereotypes. As a twist, he used only one model to play both the male and female characters in the image. The result, Levine said, “challenges the normative idea that gender presentation is stable or constant. Rather, gender expression can be fluid and multiple.”

Each image was shot at the home of the model, often one of Levine’s friends. Levine set up lights, rearranged furniture, and styled the model as both male and female. Each shot took upward of a day to finish and was shot on film. Negatives were then processed and scanned, followed by a lengthy layering and collage process.

Slate has a number of the photographs on line (at least for a short while). They can't be posted here, so enjoy them while they are available:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/ ... er_binary_ in_domestic_settings_photos.html

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

JJL is very clever, understanding the idea of sexuality at home and more disquietingly than words. Why disquieting? Maybe we are more stuck with learned stereotypes than we'd like, or maybe some of this is chemically hard-wired in us. I'll leave that for the experts. Thank you for the link.